Category: novel planning
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NaNoWriMo Day 12: High Stakes
I have a lot of action scenes in my NaNo project this year. By action, I mean fight scenes, high stakes drama. I’m trying to balance them with reflective scenes where the characters are trying to figure out how what’s happening around them affects their mind and emotions. And, even more important, when the characters…
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NaNoWriMo Day 10: Death and Oops
Even though I outlined in Preptober, I decided to kill off one of my characters. Rather violently. I think I had a bad day at work and I was taking it out on this poor fictional being. But later I realized that character was needed for a couple of functions in the story. Oops. No…
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NaNoWriMo Day 9: Inside and Outside Action
As I plan and write scenes, one thing I do is what I call the ‘outside’ action and also the ‘inside’ action. During Preptober, I created an Excel spreadsheet and wrote the point of view from each character in that scene. This point of view plans out the physical action each character performs (outside action).…
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NaNoWriMo Day 7: Life goes on, even during NaNoWriMo
Life must go on, even during NaNoWriMo. Some participants have kids. Some have spouses. Some have full time jobs. Some have hobbies they put on hold. Hobbies and other interests. I, for example, haven’t’ been reading much this first week of NaNoWriMo. To be honest, I’ve sort of slacked off on reading all year. I’m…
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NaNoWriMo Day 6: the 4th step
My writing process for NaNoWriMo 2022: I am working on two novellas for NaNoWriMo 2022, but to be honest, I will only get through one of them. I will reach 50,000 words by the end of November, but I will probably only end up with a rough draft of one of them which is called…
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NaNoWriMo Day 5: the 3rd step
Just to review, here’s my NaNoWriMo plan: Step 1: Write one complete sentence summarizing each scene Step 2: Turn each sentence into a five sentence paragraph. Step 3: Turn each paragraph into five paragraphs. (I’m writing step 3 in red to help it stick out) Step 4: Turn the five paragraphs into a narrative (Not…
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NaNoWriMo Day 4: the 2nd step
I’m done with steps 1 and 2 of my writing process. I’ll be spending the next week marching through step 3 which is expanding my scene paragraph summaries into 5 paragraphs. These 5 paragraphs are a brain dump of details I may or may not include down the road: scraps of descriptions, dialogue, interior monologues…
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NaNoWriMo Day 2: My four-steps
Was my first day of NaNoWriMo 2022 was a huge success? I wrote over 1700 words. The story is coming along wonderfully and I’ve come up with some ideas as I’ve composed. During Preptober, I made a list of phrases describing scenes. I also compiled a list of characters for the two novellas I’m writing…
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Last day of Preptober
It’s October 31st. Yes, yes, it’s Halloween. But it’s also the last day of Preptober. I’ve been prepping for NaNoWriMo this past month. But, really, I did it all in the first few days. I’ve been working on my other WIP, Oblivion’s Hope. My determination to get that novel done is why I haven’t been…