Thousand Roads

A Pokémon fansite dedicated to the creative side of the Pokémon fandom, especially fanfiction.

NaNoWriMon FAQ

The site won't recognize my username, but I have an account on nanowrimo.org. What's wrong?

First of all, make sure you've already created a challenge for this year. It should show up on your user profile as in this screenshot:

If you're not seeing that, NaNoWriMon won't work for you! You need to first create a project, then create a goal for that project specifically associated with the November NaNo challenge. Here's how!

To create a project:

  1. From your home profile page, go to "Projects" in the menu directly above the "About " block.
  2. Click the "Announce New Project" button at the top of the page.
  3. Fill out the form with info about your novel. At the bottom of the form, check the "Associate with a NaNoWriMo event" box, then select this year's November challenge from the drop-down list that appears. Make sure it's this year's challenge; you can choose from previous years' NaNos, plus Camps and other events, and you need to make sure you specifically pick the current year's NaNo challenge.
  4. Click the "On to Goal" button, fill out as appropriate, then "On to Details" and add anything you'd like to.
  5. Hit "Save Project," and you're done!

If you already have a project and simply need to enter it for this year's NaNo, do this instead:

  1. From your home profile page, go to "Projects" in the menu directly above the "About " block.
  2. Scroll down until you find the project you want to work on for this year's NaNo.
  3. Click the "Create a New Goal" button associated with the project.
  4. Check the "Associate with a NaNoWriMo event" box, then select this year's November challenge from the drop-down list. Make sure it's this year's challenge; you can choose from previous years' NaNos, plus Camps and other events, and you need to make sure you specifically pick the current year's NaNo challenge.
  5. Fill out anything else you'd like to, hit "Save Goal," and you're done!

Once you've done that, your novel should appear on your profile as shown above, and you'll be able to create a NaNoWriMon.

If you've already created a novel but are still getting rejected by the NaNoWriMon page, there may be an issue with your username itself. Usernames with special characters (like "#" or "~") can cause issues, and there are other bugs I still haven't worked out, too. If you encounter problems with your username, please contact me about it so I can try to figure out the problem and fix it for other people. But even if you're having problems with your username itself, you should still be able to make a NaNoWriMon by using your system name instead. You can find it by visiting your nanowrimo.org user profile and looking at the final portion of the URL, after the last slash:

Copy and paste that portion of the address into the "NaNoWriMo Username" field of the NaNoWriMon form, and you should be good to go. If that doesn't work, either, then something's really wrong, and you should definitely let me know about it!

Why can't I make a charizard/pikachu/other evolved pokémon?

Your NaNoWriMon's evolutionary stage is determined by the number of words you have. If you're starting with zero words, you'll only be able to make pokémon at their lowest evolutionary stage--and until you register at least one word, they'll stay an egg!

If you want a powerful evolved pokémon, you have two options: come back later in the month, when you have enough words to create a pokémon of a high level, or start with one of its lower evolutions and level it up until it evolves.

When will my riolu/eevee/etc. evolve?

Pokémon without level evolutions will evolve at a random level between 30 and 50.

How can I stop my NaNoWrimon from evolving? I want it to stay a pikachu forever!

When creating your NaNoWriMon, the "Form and Evolution" inputs determine how and whether your NaNoWriMon evolves. For any evolution you don't want to make, select "Do not evolve." For example, if you want your pikachu to stay a pikachu, select "Do not evolve" instead of one of the raichu forms.

A NaNoWriMon will always stop before the FIRST stage marked "Do not evolve." So if you have a charmander, mark charmeleon "Do not evolve," but choose forms for charizard and mega charizard, it will permanently remain a charmander rather than skipping the charmeleon stage.

How can I display my NaNoWriMon in a post on the nanowrimo.org forums?

To display a NaNoWriMon in a NaNo forum post, copy the HTML code displayed for you after confirming your NaNoWriMon, then paste it into the forums' post editor. The screenshot below shows an example of what this looks like, with the relevant code highlighted.

Note that you can NOT insert a NaNoWriMon by using the "Image Gallery" or "Upload" buttons in the post editor. Pasting in the code is the only reliable way.

How can I display my NaNoWriMon in my nanowrimo.org forum signature or profile?

You can't.

I made a NaNoWriMon in a previous year. Will it work for this year's NaNo?

No. NaNoWriMon only grow during the year they're hatched in. So, if you made a NaNoWriMon for November 2015, it will remain at whatever level it was at the end of NaNo 2015 indefinitely--you can display it in your signature or on your web site like it's in the Hall of Fame! Meanwhile, any NaNoWriMon created between December 2015 and November 2016 will be active during the November 2016 challenge, and so on. So you'll need to create a new NaNoWriMon each year.

I updated my word count, but the word count on my NaNoWriMon hasn't changed! What gives?

To avoid clobbering the NaNo servers, word counts are only checked once per hour. Therefore it can take as much as an hour for your NaNoWriMon to reflect your official word count. Technical problems with the NaNo servers can also cause delays; this is more likely to happen near the beginning of November, when the site's servers experience the heaviest traffic.

I have a different question/some other problem!

Feel free to contact me or leave a comment below. If you're having problems with your NaNoWriMon (or can't create one at all), please describe what error you're getting and include a link to your nanowrimo.org profile so I can take a look.

bellsprout

Jess

Hello, I dare say I have found that my account cannot be verified. my account on Nanowrimo is J. Crowson If we can figure one out I would love a &vulpix

If not I appreciate any effort. Thank you and have a wonderful day, Jess

shuppet

Nate

This their account I believe:http://nanowrimo.org/participants/j-crowson/buddies Jess, you'll have to sign up to this site with j-crowson as your "username" as I don't believe it allows for "." and spaces in HTML, good luck!

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Ah, my bad. The form will now accept "J. Crowson" and similar usernames without an issue.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hi! Is this you? If so, the problem is probably that you don't have a novel set up for this year yet! You can do that by going to "My Novels" under the "My NaNoWriMo" drop-down menu, then clicking the big "Writing thsi year? Enter your novel!" link and following the directions. Once you've taken care of that, you should be able to get your vulpix no problem.

If that's not you, could you please give me a link to your profile so I can see what's up?

oddish

Yoshi

Hello! Sorry to bother, but I'm having the hardest time getting this to work. My NaNo is "SamaFox," and I appreciate the help! This little Pokemon is going to be so motivational come November!

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hmm, what sort of error are you getting, and what pokemon are you going for? I was able to make one for your account no problem.

pidgey

Neta Barsade

Hi, I tried adding both codes on my signature, but it won't seem to show up? Just the text shows up and that's it.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

You mean the official nanowrimo.org forums? Could you send me a link to one of your posts so I can see what you mean?

charizard

eline

Hello Negrek,

I actually have exact the same problem as Neta Barsade last year. Do you have any idea how it comes?

(https://nanowrimo.org/forums/europe-holland-belgium/threads/417350)

arcanine

Neta Barsade

Here's one example... http://nanowrimo.org/forums/appellation-station/threads/381210 My xomment is at the very bottom.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Ah, I see. You actually want to use the HTML code for the NaNo forums, not the BBCode. So just copy this:

<p><a href="http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon"><img src="http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/serve?user=Neta-Barsade&id=428" alt="" /></a></p>

Then follow the steps in this post to get the image to show up in your forum signature (substituting your code above for the one in the post).

dialga

rainbowsylveon

I can't seem to get the codes to work for my signature. I've tried both codes, and neither of them are showing up properly. This is an amazing idea, though!

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

I take it you mean on the NaNoWriMo.org forums? Their signature editing interface is a little differently than most, but the images should show up just fine. I'm assuming your nanowrimon is for user rainbowsylveon, with a ralts named Laika. If that's right, here's what you need to do:

  • Go to "Forum Preferences" (in the "Conversation" menu)
  • Click the far right button above the "My Signature" text box, which has <> on it (says "Source Code" if you hover over it)
  • Copy and paste this into it:

<p><a href="http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon"><img src="http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/serve?user=rainbowsylveon&amp;id=437" alt="" /></a></p>

  • Hit "Ok"

That should work!

I'll be adding a brief tutorial on how to do this/a code specifically for the NaNoWriMo.org forums, since I think some people are getting confused.

corphish

rainbowsylveon

Ah, it worked! :D Thanks for the help :)

kabuto

Rebel

Hi. When I try to get a mon it tells me that I need to create a novel for this season but I've already set up my novel page on the NaNo site. I was looking for a gastly if possible. My name on the nano site is Rebel Atar

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hmm, is this you? Your profile says "No current novel," so if you tried to create one earlier, it looks like it didn't go through properly. Once your novel information shows up on your profile, you should be good to get your gastly.

If that's not you, toss me a link to your profile and I'll see what's up.

aipom

Rebel

No thats not me. Maybe that is whats causing the confusion.

This is my profile link http://nanowrimo.org/participants/rebel-atar-1422557

Thank you so much for the help

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Ooh, yeah, that most definitely is the issue. If you enter your username as either rebel-atar-1422557 or Rebel Atar 1422557 everything should work fine.

That's very strange, though; I don't know why the site is appending that number after your username. You don't type in the 1422557 when you normally go to log on? You just put in "Rebel Atar?"

yamask

Rebel

Yeah I just put in Rebel Atar or my email address. I had no idea it was adding that number.

It's working now though and I've added my mon to my forum signature. Thanks for helping.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Glad it's working for you now! I'll have to investigate further into the number thing... best guess at the moment is there are some user accounts created before some major software change that can have the same name as more recently created ones (hence why there's that other Rebel Atar person), and the number was added to prevent a collision with that account. Not an easy problem to solve if that's actually what's going on, but at least I know about it now! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

vaporeon

Hatsu

Hello! I'm trying to create a Mon but this error appears every time I try: https://gyazo.com/743ff6e91320005a3e28dc3c72d1335d The tab 'name' also says '500 error', if that helps. I'm Nisaba-Seshat on NaNo and I was trying for a Leafeon...

Thank you! Hatsu.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Thanks for leaving such a detailed bug report! The problem should be fixed now.

However, if a leafeon specifically is what you want, you might have to wait. With zero words, you can only get an eevee, and that eevee will evolve into one of its evolutions at random. To create a leafeon that won't get reverted back to an eevee, you'll need at least 15,000 words.

sunkern

Cuddleface

Well, what a cool concept! I like it... still gotta figure out the template to make it work, though.

shaymin

Jasmine K.

I was just wondering if you were planning on adding the new pokemon and alola forms, and if you are, when do you think they'll be available? (Thanks for my two current WriMon, by the way! vulpix eevee )

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Yes, I'll be adding Gen VII and Alola forms as soon as possible. I was actually hoping it would be possible to rip the necessary data from the demo so I could put them in before the start of this November, heh, but it hasn't worked out that way.

Basically, I need two things to be able to add a new generation to the system:

  1. The English names for all the new species
  2. Icon rips of the new species and Alola forms

We should get 1 right at the release of the game if not earlier, but 2 depends on the priorities of people ripping data from the game and could take hours to weeks to be complete. One way or another, I won't be able to add anything until the final third of November, so the new generation probably won't be relevant to the majority of people NaNoing this year. It will be available from the start in 2017, though!

haunter

slashteddy

Website: NaNo?

I tried to make a bulbasaur counter and I got a Bidoof error page, which said to contact you. It went through the preview page fine, it was just the page directly after clicking "confirm" that had the error apparently. Did I do something wrong? :x

chansey

slashteddy

Nevermind! I waited a few hours and tried again, and it went through fine. :) This is such a cool idea! Thank you!

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Glad it ended up working out for you! You stumbled on a very obscure bug, so no, there was nothing you did wrong the first time around. It should be fixed now.

venomoth

Sturges6

Hi, I really hate to be a bother, but is there any way to change the gender of a NaNoWriMon once it's been created? I meant to create a female Vulpix but accidentally created a male Vulpix instead.

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

At the moment there's no way for a user to change a NaNoWriMon's attributes after creating it, but I manually made the vulpix female for you.

mewtwo

Sturges6

Thank you so much for your help!

slowbro

KyrieKaimei

Hello~ Thank you for creating this! It'll certainly keep me going this year!

But I tried to share my mon on another site - Gaia Online actually - and it doesn't seem to be showing up in the signature there? Gaia uses BBC on its forums so I just copied and pasted it but it doesn't appear to be working. Does it not work on other sites? I wanted to use it there because I'm also very active in the Nano community on Gaia as well...

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hmm, no, the images should work fine on any site, and I've been able to put them in my signature on BBCode-using forums before. What problem do you have when you try to include it? Does it show a broken image, or the actual code itself?

Anyway, you can try this code:

[url=http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/][img]http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/serve?user=kyriekaimei&id=955[/img][/url]

If that doesn't work, perhaps this one will instead:

[url=http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/][img]http://thousandroads.net/fanfic/nanowrimon/static/user/kyriekaimei-955.png[/img][/url]

dragonite

KyrieKaimei

I'm not sure what was wrong with it; it wasn't showing the image at all, just the little box it shows when an image is broken. Anyway, the second code you gave me worked. Thank you so much :)

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hmm, unfortunately if the second code works and the first doesn't, that suggests Gaia disallows dynamic images in signatures. The second code will give you the image, but it won't appear to update normally because it will be cached by your browser and get out of sync with your actual word count pretty fast.

Nothing I can do about that, though. Sounds like the images just aren't going to work properly on Gaia. =/

nidorino

hopeakaarme

Hi,

First off, thanks for doing such a cool thing! I can't wait to write together with my little mon. A question, though -- I picked male for my pokemon, but it's showing the female sign on the graphic. I even double-checked, and I definitely picked male, yet somehow it ended up female anyway?

lugia

castra

the same thing happened to me too: I checked male but it ended up being female anyway

arcanine

castra

Yes! If it's not too much bother ;;

lapras

castra

Thank you, and sorry for the trouble!

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hmm, that is strange. It definitely went down in the database as female.

I changed it to male, but the change won't show up until the next time you update your word count.

jynx

badwolfgirl01

I picked "male" for my Mon, but he still shows up as female! I created my very first ever starter (a male Cyndaquil named Buddy)... I'd like him to be male if at all possible?

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Yeah, managed to introduce this problem while fixing a bug earlier. It should be corrected, and your pokemon are now male. The change will show up the next time your word count updates.

tepig

Silver

Really love this, thank you!

espeon

Zephy

This is such a wonderful idea! Thank you so much for putting it together, I entered my stuff and it seems to be working for me. Looking forward to my little buddy evolving as I write!

scolipede

AmericanPi

This is so cool! Don't mind me, I just discovered this site and it's pretty fun to just poke around it haha. I want a NaNoWriMon, but for this year's NaNoWriMo I'm just targeting 50,000 words of anything by the end of the month (so I'm technically not writing a novel - I just hope to hit 50,000 words with a combination of fics). I'm not sure if the NaNoWriMo site allows for this, so I'll go check now. I'll definitely bookmark this page, though. 8>

rayquaza-mega

Negrek Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Hey! Doing a "various things adding up to 50,000 words" isn't the "official" NaNo challenge, but it's a variation a lot of people do if they have multiple projects they want to work on. I'm doing pretty much the same thing myself.

Nice to see you, glad you enjoy the site!

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