Posts tagged nanowrimo

Have no experience with outlining a novel?

Here is the outline for my first chapter. Others are outlined in more details, but this is as simple as it gets:

 Chapter 1

• mausoleum

  • sitting in front of mother’s place of burial

    • crying

  • allude to her death

    • no specific details

      • Merissa remembers wanting to scream

        • was unable to

          • “I was only able to scream when it was too late, when she was gone.”

  • Harlan finds her

    • was worried

      • she had been gone for two days

    • finds out father is a nervous wreck

• house

  • Jake is happy to see her

    • thought the worst

  • keeps her home for the day

    • stays home himself

  • tries to talk to her about what happened

    • doesn’t want to talk about it

      • he worries more

No, this is not a threat to boost your word count.

Write or Die is a website where you’re having a word war, but it’s against a computer program. No one is writing against you (unless you purchase the $10 desktop feature, which has an option for you to find a partner to do a word war with).

First, you type in how many words you want to get done in your period of time. You don’t want to set your goal too high, but you don’t want to go too low, either. Make the goal obtainable within reason; in other words, don’t say your goal is to write just one word.

Next, select how long you want to write for. The shortest time is ten minutes, and the longest is 2 hours. Like in a word war between two or more people, fifteen minutes works best. Once you actually start writing, you are only aloud one pause; think about that when selecting your time.

You are given three consequences: gentle mode, normal mode and kamikaze mode. This ties in with your grace period: forgiving, strict, and evil.

When you’ve begun writing, you will see the consequences and grace period work first hand. Grace period allows you a bit of time to come up with the word you’re racking your brain for; if you give yourself a forgiving grace period, you’ll have more time than the evil grace period.

The background will begin to turn red when you haven’t typed for a certain number of seconds. Once you’ve gone over your allotted seconds, the consequences kick in: words begin to be deleted!

I know, I know. This seems cruel. But if you’re desperate for a word count boost, working against the clock is a major factor. If you’re in kamikaze mood, the words delete a lot faster than if you’re in gentle mode.

Once you’ve made the settings to your liking, you may begin writing in the box provided. Your word count is kept track in large letters at the bottom as is the time.

I tend to set my goal for 250 words in 15 minutes with normal consequences and a strict grace period, and this works well for me. After you’ve played around with it a few times, you’ll know what works best for you.

A word war is a competition to see who can write the most in a set period of time. It’s a fun way to see who can write more as well as a great way to boost your word counts.

Fifteen minutes works well, and you can participate in word wars in different chat rooms. If you have an MSN or an AIM, or even Skype or Oovoo, you can participate among friends that are doing NaNo. If you’re comfortable with giving out an MSN e-mail or an AIM screen name, you can also open this up to other people that want to do word wars.

The NaNoWriMo forums have a section dedicated to people who are looking to participate in a word war. Why not check it out?

It’s good to plan some kind of reward to give yourself once NaNoWriMo ends. You wrote a novel, and you deserve to do something for yourself.

Even if you don’t win, reward yourself! You just attempted to write a novel, and even though you didn’t reach the ultimate end goal, there’s always next year!

Some examples of rewards for yourself:

• buy that tablet you’ve been saving for but have put off buying

• spend a day at the spa

• take a trip

• go for a long drive in the country to enjoy the fall scenery

Once NaNoWriMo is over, I’ll be going on a family vacation to Florida for a week.

What will you do to reward yourself, whether or not you meet your NaNoWriMo goal?

If you’re like me, the view outside is a strange mixture of fall beauty and winter mess.

With NaNoWriMo starting on Tuesday, there’s no better day to plot your novel than today! Stay inside your warm houses, sip some Hot Chocolate (if you’re that into it), and wrack your brains for those little details you’ll need to remember about your plot, character, or setting.

In order to be a success in NaNoWriMo, you need to manage your time wisely. After all, you are on a deadline.

I’m first going to share the way I manage my time during November, then I will offer suggestions for others.

I have a BlackBerry, and there is a free Google Sync app that you can download. By doing this, it allowed me to sync my Google calendar to the calendar on my phone, so I always get updates about what I should be doing.

Before November begins, I program what my objective word count is for every day throughout the month. Remember, you only need to write 1,667 words per day in order to finish on November 30^th.

I’m a huge television fanatic, so I make sure to program when my shows are on so I don’t forget to watch. Because my computer is in a room with a TV and I watch shows with my father on a different TV, I make note of whether I’m going to be watching the show in the family room or the living room, where the computer is. When I’m able to watch a show while I’m at the computer, I utilize the time to get my writing done.

If you don’t have a smart phone, or the Google Sync app isn’t available for your phone, you can do the same thing with your phone’s calendar, and you can even set it so that it alerts you to what you should be doing.

A few tips:

• Schedule in time for homework (if you’re in school), meals and showers. Based on what I know from others that have done NaNo, some people don’t schedule in these simple things, and focus only on writing.

• Utilize your days off as well as the weekends to either get ahead or catch up if you’re behind.

• Don’t forget to socialize. It’s alright to go out on a Friday night, or spend fifteen minutes talking to a friend; you don’t want to shut people out during November.

Research is an important aspect in many novels. The Research Tracker is on page 252 in this PDF.

The Research Tracker keeps track of what topic you’re going to research, what you’re looking for, and what you learn about the topic. This seemingly simple worksheet may be one of the most important in Book in a Month.

Here are just a few examples of what you can use your research tracker for:

• the setting of a novel that is a real place, but one you’ve never been to before

• a type of weapon your characters use

• types of gang violence in your setting

• information on Nazi Germany

• the effects heroin has on someone who has been using for 20 years

The uses of the research tracker are seemingly endless, and the way the worksheet is formatted will keep all your research organized.

Schmidt, Victoria L. Book in a Month: the Foolproof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest, 2008.

fyeahnanowrimo:

Spend some time getting to know your characters.  You can post it here or not, but we’re less than a week away from NaNo, and I’ve got something that will help you get to know your characters, behind the cut.

101 Things You Should Know About Your Characters

Read More

This really helps if you’re stuck on character. Getting to know your characters is essential for a successful novel.

Theme is actually very relevant to a story, even if you only believe that it was invented by English teachers as a painful way to make students think about what a story means.

Whether or not you work towards a specific theme when you’re writing your novel, there’s always going to be something a reader takes away from what you’ve written.

If you’re planning on writing with a specific theme in mind, use the Theme Spider (page 273), and the Theme Revelation Check (page 285), which can be found in this PDF.

The Theme Spider may seem complex and nerve-wracking, but it’s rather simple. First and foremost, your actual theme goes in the middle. Each of the surrounding blocks will tell you a little bit about the theme, and it will help you form your theme. You may not be able to complete all of this before you start writing, but you’re more than welcome to fill it in as you write your novel.

The Theme Revelation Check is a place to organize where in your acts the theme will be reinforced. While readers may pick up on themes you didn’t have in mind when you were writing, a good percentage will pick up on the theme you specifically wrote if you make sure you have theme-enforcing moments scattered throughout the novel.

In the final Book in a Month post, I’ll briefly discuss how research is important to certain novels.

Schmidt, Victoria L. Book in a Month: the Foolproof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest, 2008.