Category: discovery draft
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Is It Preptober?
Next month will be the first November in decades that the official NaNoWriMo website will not exist. Does this mean no National Novel Writing Month? Will there be a NaNoWriMo community? Should I do NaNoWriMo? I can only speak for myself, but I plan to do NaNoWriMo. Which means this is Preptober. Preptober: It’s a…
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Friday’s Findings: Ask Why
Why Writers Should Ask “Why” Before Writing a Novel Before a writer sketches an outline, builds a character profile, or writes the first sentence, there’s a question worth pausing to ask: Why am I writing this novel? Most of the time, I write for fun. I never think about the why. But I keep coming…
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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
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.…
Andrew M. Friday 