I’m trying something new this year for NaNoWriMo. I’m jumping around. Not up and down in my chair, but around the manuscript.
Usually, I write in a linear fashion. I start at the beginning and write the scenes in order. This year I’ve decided to skip around my WIP.
Why am I trying this?
The idea is to have some narrative all the way through the novel. Right now I have a summary of the entire story–one or two paragraphs that encapsulate what needs to happen in that scene.
But what has happened in the past NaNoWriMos is I have a rough draft for the first half of the story and the last half is still summary.
This year, I want to have clips and scraps of dialogue, action and description for each scene. All the way through. Some scenes may be complete by the end of NaNoWriMo, and some won’t be, but I’ll have something to work with that’s more than a summary.
Psychologically, this will help me be able to jump into to writing mode more quickly after NaNoWriMo.
Now here’s the fun part: during NaNoWriMo, I’m using a random number generator to pick a number. I’ve numbered all my scenes, so whatever the generator picks, I do a word sprint for 15 or 20 minutes for that scene.
So far, it’s worked well, and I enjoy bouncing around the manuscript.
This is so unlike me. Ideally, I’m the kind of person who writes straight from beginning to end, but this way, I’m making connections between different parts of the story I may not make if I write it straight through.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Here are some recent articles on fiction writing I’ve come across:
- 6 Fantastic Tips for Writing Stellar Science Fiction
- Discover Your Writing Strengths (and Weaknesses)
- How to develop a story: 10 steps to a winning plot
- A Show-Don’t-Tell Database for Writers
- Using Conflict to Build Tension
Photo by Vlad Chețan from Pexels
Andrew M. Friday 