Andrew M. Friday

Category: novel planning

  • The girlfriend of my protagonist is boring. Hate her.

    No, I don’t really hate her. She has the potential to be an interesting character for my novel–for now I’m calling it The Deity Run–but it’s my fault she’s boring with an uppercase B. In the first draft I wrote during National Novel Writing Month, I created a girlfriend for my protagonist, Ferdinand Clark. Her…

  • How does the Snowflake Method work?

    Now if you are not a math whiz, don’t let this scare you: The Snowflake Method of writing a novel follows the same idea of a fractal design that starts off small and builds up. It’s easier to understand if you see this visual. A snowflake is a fractal design and that is the whole…

  • The next step: The Snowflake Method

    For National Novel Writing Month, I wrote a rough draft of a novel called The Deity Run. Instead of “rough draft,” a more accurate term would be “discovery draft” for in this first writing, I usually discover the characters, plot, theme and more about my story. Now that I have my “discovery draft” for The…

  • Writing habits: try this, not that

    Writing habits: try this, not that

    In my last post, I strongly suggested that practicing writing every day was the big Secret to becoming a better writer. Now, I don’t want to imply that is the only habit to incorporate into a writing discipline. It may be the most important one, but other habits exist that a writer should address. I’ve…

  • No, seriously: how can I become a better writer?

    No, seriously: how can I become a better writer?

    I use to teach creative writing courses to adults. The excitement the people brought to the class inspired me. They wanted to be there. They had great ideas. They sought ways to become better writers. They seemed disappointed when I told them the Secret. I believe they expected me to pull out magic pills for…

  • Now that I don’t have a deadline . . .

    On Friday morning, November 30th, twelve and a half hours before midnight November 30th, I passed 50,000 for NaNoWriMo. My story is not finished. What is to keep me motivated? Well, besides being an interesting story to me, I need to set a deadline for myself. My goal is to finish the novel before midnight…

  • Help. I’m addicted to grammar

    Ten years ago, when I started teaching as an adjunct English teacher at a local college, I brushed up on my grammar. I fell in love with the basics of writing all over again: the parts of speech; verbals;  clauses–both dependent and independent; appositives; and so on . . . I had forgotten so much…

  • I’m four-fifths done so I might as well finish it

    Yesterday afternoon I passed 40,000 words on my manuscript for NaNoWriMo. Only 10,000 words to go and I have until midnight next Friday. So I’m feeling pretty good.  One thing though: my story won’t be finished. Yeah, I’ll have 50,0000 words but I haven’t even gotten to the part that I thought I would be…

  • Some things I’m learning from this year’s NaNoWriMo

    When I finished working on NaNoWriMo last night, I had finally completed a word count ahead of schedule for the first time this NaNo year. By the end of the day November 11, I should have had 18, 337 words and last night around 9:30pm, I had 18,597. I’m also learning some new things along…