NaNoWriMo Approaches!!! Advice on how to keep going through November and onto victory.

(P.S. If you've never heard of NaNoWriMo before in your life, or if you are wondering what freaky manga Japanese animé video game us writers are talking about (as I did when I first heard of it), visit ywp.nanowrimo.org.)

NaNoWriMo
aka "National Novel Writing Month", "Oh boy...", and "Oh goodie goodie!"

Some people hate NaNoWriMo (I know some people). Some people love it (meeeee!!!). Some people hate and love it (Angelina Zoe...hint hint...). Why? Because writing a novel in one month is the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. But if you like a challenge, then this is the month for you.

So, your biggest question is: HOW DO I GET THROUGH NOVEMBER WITH A MINIMAL AMOUNT OF BLOOD ON MY KEYBOARD?!?!

Allow me to help you!



Pre-NaNoWriMo

Before November comes (and it's a little late now, but at least you'll know for next year, or else stuff everything you can into one week), you should plan your book.

Yes.

No, you should.

No, you're not one of those people who run around in a happy world where planning isn't needed.

YOU NEED TO PLAN.

*sigh*...I am a non-planner as well, my friend. But this passing month, I've discovered planning doesn't have to be boring.

You see, I'm all in NaNoWriMo this year. I've thought hard about what I want to write, and I've come up with a pretty awesome book idea (in my opinion, ahem-hem). So, I decided to plan it, because I always get stuck in the middle of my unplanned books.

First, I made detailed bios of my characters. I described them up to their nose hairs, gave a basic personality I wanted them to own, and created their history. Of course, I left some parts up to my imagination; I never try to overthink my characters, or else they adopt the dreaded puppet syndrome. You have to make up enough of them to where they actually have form and thought, but not so much that they don't develop on their own as well.

After that, I made a general outline of the book, highlighting the biggest points in the novel. I managed to fit this all on one page, and I was pretty proud of that. Just jot down the big scenes you want in your novel, and piece them together. Sticky notes and poster-board is a good way to do this. I've never actually tried it, but I figure it'd be pretty awesome. I just organized my scenes in my head as I wrote them, and only messed up once. So I circled it and drew a little arrow thingly over to where it was supposed to go.

Here's a picture of my general outline. Don't bother trying to read it, I coded the secret parts, and plus it's backwards. But if you do manage to read it, I commend you. That's impressive.

So. That worked very very well for me. Next, I sat down and wrote detailed synopses of each chapter. Now you may think you should have a set chapter number, but I wouldn't worry about that. I just write it and write it and end it when it ends. In my chapter outlines, I write in casual shorthand (thus implicating frequent uses of "like," "duh," "AHK," and "lol :)") in this form:

__

bob wakes up from horrible nightmare / freaks out / goes to girlfriend's house to talk about dream / she's all like, you're a weirdo and dumps him / bob goes home sad

__

Of course mine are usually longer than that but you get the gist. I think this format gives me space to breath. If I detail it too much, I get bored with the book before I even start writing it. This gives me a lot of elbow room to experiment and change things if they get a little crazy.

Now, you just have to STAY INSPIRED! My favorite way to do this is to visit Pinterest! I look up all sorts of pictures based on my novel. Searching "character inspiration", "story scene inspiration", "action story inspiration", "story conflict inspiration", etc. comes up with some really good stuff. If this isn't your thing, try talking about your book to your friends/family, or reading books similar to yours. But most of all, STAY POSITIVE. You can do this, because YOU ARE AWESOME!!!

Now go out there and WRITE!!!

—AC