Category: discovery draft
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Test Your Novel’s Potential
“Is my novel idea worth pursuing?” How can you know you will fall in love with your novel without spending hours of writing, stringing together thousands of words, and creating dozens of scenes before realizing it doesn’t work? Try this: Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel, recommends just writing the single…
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Friday’s Findings: Your Novel’s Word Count Breakdown
Have you ever asked yourself, “Is my middle too saggy?” Of course, I’m talking about the first draft of your novel. I have several novels in the first draft stage, and I plan to revise them over the next couple of years, Lord willing. Here’s the thing: before I start rewriting them, I want to…
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My 50k Novel in 30 Days: Final Daze
During my last three days of doing this unofficial NaNoWriMo, I wondered about my writing craft process for the future… Day 28 It is a sad day for me. The website for NaNoWriMo has vanished. Ironic it happened while I’m in the last week of one of the best 50k words in 30 days I’ve ever done.…
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What to do if you’re having trouble starting a scene
My Linktree Photo by Landiva Weber
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Friday’s Findings: My 50K Novel Week 2
As an alternate to NaNoWriMo, I’m doing a 50K word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Here’s how the second week went: Day 8: My city has the best coffee shops. I’m sitting in one before I go to work and I’m going to outline some unfinished scenes. I swore I wouldn’t do…
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One Way to Write a Scene
So, I’m doing this thing where I am writing the rough draft in a special way: pseudo screenplay. I recommend doing this if you are having trouble getting the scene started. Otherwise, I recommend writing the scene in a normal fashion, a linear development. If that does not work, try to layer in each fiction…
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Friday’s Findings: My 50K Novel Week 1
I’ve decided to prove that I can write fifty thousand words in thirty days on my own — without anyone or any organization giving me a deadline. Here are the parameters I set for myself: Here is how my first week went: Day 1: It’s a Thursday and in the middle of the work week.…
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Friday’s Findings: My First 50K Novel
On Friday, October 31, 2008, I woke up to the radio talking about something called National Novel Writing Month. Write fifty thousand words by the end of November? Impossible! But I wanted to try it because I’m crazy. So, after work that Friday, I checked out the NaNoWriMo website. I spent my time making a…
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Do Your Own 50K Novel
The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) website may be going inactive, but the spirit of NaNoWriMo does not have to die. It’s an opportunity for writers who have participated in the past to write their own fifty-thousand words in thirty days. And it can be any month they want. And they can start on any…
Andrew M. Friday 