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Naming names: how to give characters names
An earlier version of this post ran in September 2009.
What’s in a name? Well, as it turns out, it can be quite a bit. I recently read a couple contemporary works where the heroine, aged 20-30, was named Madison. Madison is an adorable name—in fact, a little too adorable. It was the 538th most popular first name for girls in the 1980s. It climbed to the top 100 in the 1990s and has since soared to #8 for girls in 2010, the most recent data available now.
So what, you ask? Well, those statistics mean that the average girl named Madison is less than five years old right now. When I read these, I couldn’t help but thinking of the curly-haired toddler down the street. Although a strong, androgynous girls’ name is awesome and Madison hits all the right notes with parents and authors alike today, that’s exactly what makes it all wrong when naming a character who’s supposed to be an adult today.
Personally, I love naming characters. I’ve spent considerable time searching for just the right name for each character, making sure their names fit their ages, backgrounds, and characteristics. Here are a few of my favorite resources for finding the perfect name. (Note: some of these resources are US-centric, but I’m sure that you can find similar data for other countries.)
Character Naming Books
The links to books are affiliate links
The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. I picked this up while pregnant with my oldest, even though my husband and I had the names of our first four children already picked out (three down, one to go).
Why I like this: It give little profiles outlining why and when each name was popular, as well as assigning names to groups according to style and popularity, and lists similar names. (That’s especially good when you have a name you really like but it happens to be your brother-in-law’s name.)
The New Baby Name Survey Book by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod. The authors of this book surveyed >100,000 parents about 1400 popular names to see what perceptions and connotations the names carried. I picked this up (again, while pregnant) at a thrift store for $2, and I was a little hesitant at first to spend that much (no, seriously), but it’s definitely paid off. In fact, it’s paid off so much that several years later when I found the above-listed new edition, I sprang for it.
Why I like this: Seriously, where else will you find someone to tell you that a female Jerry calls to mind “a friendly, fun-loving brunette who enjoys being the life of the party” while some see the male Jerry as “likely to wear flashy gold chains and may come on a bit too strong.” Those are from the previous edition, which brings me to the drawback: The 1992 Baby Name Personality Survey, with Barry Sinrod, is a little out of date (I mean, seriously, were you naming your character Jerry?). And it’s a penny for the 1992 OR the 2007 version (used on Amazon)—so why not?
Character Naming Websites
BabyNames.com. I use this to look up name origins and meanings. Why I like this: I like to be able to search by meaning and/or culture of origin. Um, duh.
US baby name popularity from 1880 from Social Security records. You can look at the popularity of a name over time, or popular name lists by birth year. Why I like this: This is the best way to find age-appropriate (American) names for characters.
Nymbler from The Baby Name Wizard website. Like the book, this helps to find similar names. Why I like this: It makes it easy to find names by “style,” including origins, popular time period and the more subjective “feel.” I do still prefer the book version, but the website is also fun to play with.
The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager, which generates graphs of name popularity over time. The data is based on the SSA. Why I like this: It’s a visual representation of popular names over time, which is a little more accessible than just the lists from the SSA. (The blog also talks about naming trends.)
The US Census Surname Distribution to find last names, and to check if the sometimes crazy last names I want to use are really last names. (Real names include Police, Outlaw, Saint, Notice, Justice and Riddle. Only one of which I’ve actually used.) Why I like this: when I’m stumped on a last name, reading through the list or using a random number generator can help me finish my character’s name.
Real life, of course!
I seldom name characters after people I know—it’s kinda weird for me—but the people around us every day are a great source for character names. In fact, one of my writing friends actually keeps a name data bank—whenever she meets someone with an interesting name, she makes a note of it and puts it in her data banks on her computer. She also collects names from newspaper articles, especially foreign names—and she stores those by nationality (and surname/given name). When this friend uses names from her list, she marks them with different colors for passing mentions, minor characters (both recyclable) and major characters (one-time use).
And of course, there’s the old standby: the phone book! (Whatever will we do when they stop printing them?)
And always double check
I always Google a character’s name before I settle on using it, just to make sure there isn’t a famous person I’ve forgotten/have no reason to know about with the same last name. On the other hand, if there are a lot of (moderately) famous people with that name, I figure it’s fine to use it again, right?
Of course, Google isn’t a foolproof measure against choosing a bad name. If you’ve ever given your characters a supremely bad name—and despite all the resources I have, let me assure you you’re not alone—be sure to come back Friday! (And save yours for then, too, so we can all have our catharsis at once 
)
How do you find your characters’ names? What are your favorite or least favorite character names? Would you comment on a character’s name in critique?
Photo credits: Name tag—Henk L; Jim—Deon Staffelbach
Posted in Technique
Tagged baby names, character name, character names, names, naming character
5 Comments
Finding the “Right” Word
Confession time!
I totally use a thesaurus. Even while drafting. If I’m repeating a word too much and I just know there’s an easy synonym (it’s that tip-of-the-tongue syndrome!), words that are so quick and easy that they’re in the standard word processor thesaurus, I look them up. And if you’ve got a good thesaurus, it’s fun to gambol in the Word Nerd-ery sometimes.
But I’ve also seen thesaurus use gone bad, and I’ve learned the hard way that the thesaurus isn’t always your friend. (Seriously, scarred for life. I was like 11 and it’s so embarrassing, I still can’t share it.)
Thesauruses: the good, the bad and the ugly
With my affection for thesauruses, I was excited to read Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite [affiliate link] chapter reveling in thesauruses. He gives some excellent tips on using thesauruses wisely:
- Understand Roget’s’ possibilities. Use a thesaurus to
- discover more fitting or more forceful words;
- find those good words you can’t quite recall [hello!];
- avoid repetition of words [oh yeah];
- escape clichés and worn modifiers;
- help describe the so-called indescribable;
- refine your intended meanings (via related concepts); and
- simply luxuriate in the plenitude of language.
- But understand Roget’s‘ limits
- Before embracing an unfamiliar word, look up its definition and usage in a good dictionary.
- Don’t fish in the categories, swim in them.
- Don’t grab all the words that fit.
- Search your brain as well. [He recommends flipping to a section that has nothing to do with the subject at hand, like describing light using words from the "Violence" section: savage, brutal, etc.]
- Use new and/or older editions.
- Take chances.
(77-78)
What’s my favorite thesaurus? I happened to find an Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus [affiliate link] at a local thrift store (I agonized over the $3, but it’s so worth it!). It’s got fun little asides by famous authors for some of the words, fantastic breadth—I love this thing.
Of course, we all know the difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug—and thesauruses alone can’t tell us if a word is truly the right one. But relying on Plotnik’s tips is one good way to make sure we get a good start from thesauruses.
The Naming of Things
Plotnik also recommends another way to find the perfect word: finding the right name for things. Visual dictionaries and word lists are the best tools for these things, with terminology for very specific things arranged by subject. If you need to set a scene or use industry-specific terms, check out one of these resources that Plotnik recommends:
- Random House Webster’s Word Menu
- Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary
- The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
- The Firefly Visual Dictionary
The “Right” Word
But as with thesauruses, just knowing the “right” word doesn’t necessary make it the right word (tautology FTW!). When we look up an obscure term for our research in our setting, it might be right in the sense that it describes it accurately—but even if it’s right in that sense, if your audience doesn’t know the term, it won’t help them visualize it. Then is it “right”?
In a day of instant information, readers really do put down books to look stuff up. I even documented a time I did that here on the blog: a novel I was reading named an obscure medical device, as if that would be enough for us to picture it being used as a weapon. It was not, I opined, the right word because I couldn’t visualize the pivotal weapon throughout the scene and, frustrated, put the book down to hop on the Internet. (And being me, it was some time before I got back to it, most likely.)
As a writer, I went through this with the word “inveigle” in one manuscript (okay, since we’re confessing: I’ve been through it a lot in pretty much every manuscript, but this is one of my stories). I found it in a thesaurus and the definition looked right.
I decided to ignore the fact that pretty much everyone I had read it—intelligent, college-educated people who really like me—tripped over that word and pointed it out. It was Capital-R-Right and nobody was going to convince me otherwise. After all, isn’t reading how we grow our vocabularies? Didn’t I see, like, one blog comment once where someone said they liked a book to teach them some new words??
If the logic sounds tenuous, it was. Finally, after yet another friend mentioned that word, I went on a hunt for that word in the wild. This is something you should always do with new words. (Google, how I love you.)
And what did I find? It seemed to have a connotation I definitely didn’t want there. It hurt, but I cut that word—because it wasn’t as right as I thought. And since then, I’ve cut a few more words that might send readers running for their dictionaries—because I don’t want to pull them out of the story, but mostly because they weren’t in the characters’ voices anyway.
I’m getting better about this: in my current WIP, the characters use a tombolo to get to the final confrontation spot. Oddly enough, tombolo is one of the examples of obscure, precise terms that Plotnik uses in the visual dictionary chapter of Spunk & Bite (page 210). I felt pretty chuffed to know the term already (and was even able to list an example!).
And that’s one of the dangers of using these kinds of terms. If you know this secret, fancy argot, you get to sound smart and feel self-satisfied. Otherwise, you’re probably thinking: A whatsiwhato? Plotnik defines the term in his book, but most novelists don’t send their characters running for a dictionary or factual lesson/as-you-know-Bob in mid-story. (And aren’t you glad?)
And you’re probably still not sure what a tombolo is, huh? If you’ve gotten annoyed enough to go look it up—well, thanks for coming back. That’s more than most readers would probably do, especially on the Internet.
A tombolo is a sandbar that connects a former island to the mainland. Yes, it’s one word that can elegantly replace a somewhat awkward, 9-word explanation. But when that one word doesn’t illustrate, only obfuscates, your meaning, is it “right”?
(I should note that I’m definitely not fully cured: I’m looking forward to bringing out a high-falutin’ voice in a 19th century character in my current WIP. 
)
Naturally, you can go too far with this. My best friend was critiqued in a college class and one member of the class took issue with a word he didn’t know in her manuscript. This critiquer was convinced she should take it out because that word took him out of the story and frustrated him as he read. The word? Betrothed.
Not exactly an astrophysics term. Similarly, I’ve had readers have a problem with “C.I.” (confidential informant, used in a police procedural mystery), “frosted” referring to highlighted hair, and the adjectival drawn. I think they’re fairly transparent. We don’t have to write for the lowest common denominator—as long as we don’t write over the average readers’ heads. (As for determining who’s average in your audience . . . sorry, that’s up to you!)
To sum up, the right word:
- has the right definition (denotation)
- is as vivid, powerful and succinct as the context needs
- carries the right connotation
- is right for the character’s voice
- is right for the general reader
You can get away with breaking maaaybe one of those axioms with a word, and even then, you shouldn’t do that too frequently—so choose carefully. And remember that every time your reader has to set your book down to look up an obscure term to try to picture what you’re writing, there’s a better and better chance that he won’t pick it up again, frustrated that you keep talking over his head and make it impossible for him to visualize your story.
What do you think? What does it take to make the “right” word Right?
Posted in Technique
Tagged character, dictionary, the right word, thesaurus, usage, voice
5 Comments
Goals in fiction, on every level
And I don’t mean getting published
This time of year is ideal for thinking of our resolutions. But we’re not the only ones who should be working (or autopiloting) toward a goal: in fiction, characters should have a goal, too. Characters’ goals affect their stories from beginning to end, on multiple levels.
Sometimes, we hear “goals” harped on so much that it gives us a complex. I had one: I used to think my characters didn’t have good enough goals. Beyond the scope of the plot, I couldn’t think of what their goals might be.
Plot-level goals
I used to think that characters had to have goals in their lives aside from the ones that get thrust upon them at the beginning of the story. While that’s true, I doubt the hero’s goal of retiring in Hawaii or the heroine’s dream of 
owning a bed and breakfast in twenty years plays heavily into their story. (It can help to make the characters richer, of course, but that’s just not what Goal-Motivation-Character is all about.)
Finally, I realized because of the types of stories I write, the plot did contain the characters’ goals, and that was okay. In romance, the characters’ goals often are to find someone. In mysteries, the characters’ goals are to find the killer/perpetrator and bring him/her to justice. There’s something wrong in the world (the character is alone; someone has been killed, etc.), and it’s their job to right it. And that’s OKAY.
The character’s plot-level goal is controlled by the story question. In a romance, it’s “Will they get together?” In a mystery, it’s “Will they catch the bad guy?” In other genres of fiction, of course, the variety of questions might be wider, but it might be “Will Jenny find healing?” or “Will Harry triumph over his awful, lonely roots?”
The answer to all of those story questions is yes. (You could phrase them other ways to get a no, like “Will the murderer get away with it?” or “Will Jenny’s past ultimately defeat her?”) The characters’ external, plot level goals relate directly to these questions. In a romance, with “Will they get together?”, the characters’ goals are to not be alone, to be with someone who understands them, to find someone who will love them in spite or even because of their peculiarities. (These might double as internal goals, too.) In a mystery, the characters’ goals are to serve justice.
Plot level goals are SIMPLE. I worked myself up overthinking this level of goals, worrying that my characters had to have a grand life plan in place and they were on step 27-B section ii-c when suddenly STORY CRISIS comes along. Not necessarily. What does your character get in the end? Is the story about the character’s journey to get that? There’s your goal. (And if your story isn’t about your character’s goal, take another look at your story.)
Internal goals
It was much harder for me to identify characters’ internal goals: until I looked closer at their internal conflicts. Just like the external plot conflict, I found the characters had goals inherent in their conflicts 
already. I just hadn’t fully expressed those goals to myself. And when I did, I was able to tweak their character arcs ever so slightly to make the characters even stronger.
For example, let’s say your character struggles with being disrespected. (Kind of external, but we’ll go with it.) The story follows their internal journey, from disrespected to respected, or maybe from disrespected/low self-esteem to high self-esteem. Their internal goal is right there, inherent in that starting point: gain respect.
To find internal goals, look at the character’s arc. Where does she start from, emotionally? What does she gain or how does he change in the course of the story? Voila.
Internal conflict adds a necessary dimension to characters. Making sure that internal conflict is clear and expressed in a character arc adds a necessary dimension to good fiction.
Scene-level goals
Characters have even smaller goals, of course, than living happily ever after or ridding the world of the threat. Characters should have goals in (almost) every scene. In fact, in Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham says that our POV characters should state their goals for that scene fairly early on.
The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a simulation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to the attainment of his major story goal. . . . (24)
The scene begins with a stated, clear-cut goal. (25)
Scene goals are fantastic for structuring fiction at this level because they tell us, the writers, what needs to happen. Our character arrives at the car dealership with the mission to buy a car/talk to his ex-girlfriend/flirt with the new salesguy. (It sets up the “scene question,” if you will: will s/he get this goal?) The character works toward that goal, until the disaster, as Bickham calls it. We answer the scene question with, most likely, a “no” or a “yes, but [complication].” (Just plain yesses should be reserved for false victories, lulling characters into a sense of security, and, of course, the finale.)
But scene goals aren’t just for the beginning and end of scenes. You can use them to keep the tension high in a scene. By reminding the readers what the character is after—and showing the growing disparity between her goal and reality—we can draw the reader along through the scene. As always, we don’t want to harp on anything too much or be repetitive.
Scene-level goals drive the story forward through each scene. Keeping those goals clear helps to keep our characters—and our readers—oriented in the story.
Occasionally, we’ll have something unexpected befall a character in a scene. The POV character may not always have a goal at the beginning of a scene like this—but try to use this technique sparingly, or your characters might seem directionless and as though they’re not taking charge in their life.
Goals and character sympathy
Another role that goals can play in fiction is to help develop character sympathy. How? When readers support a character’s goal, they want the character to succeed. They care.
What does it take to get our readers on board? According to James N. Frey, it takes a noble goal. They can be a really detestable person (Frey’s example is of a convict who wants to break out of prison), but giving them a goal that we can all believe in helps us to believe in the character, too (Frey’s example, IIRC, is that the convict wants to get out of prison to help a family member). And this really works: I felt it happen to me while watching a game show.
What’s noble? Something that’s self-sacrificing, something that benefits another person more than it does the main character, something that helps the general populace (but that can be too vague: helping one concrete person, such as the character’s child, can actually be more effective as a character goal than trying to better the whole world).
Goals and characterization
Our characters sometimes do have life goals other than the plot-level story goals—goals that may or not play into our story, and goals that may or may not be fulfilled in the course of the story. The bed-and-breakfast, a job at the FBI, the private island in the Bahamas.
While these might not really influence the plot, they can still have a great effect on the story: adding layers to your characters. Like real people, our characters can have life goals and dreams. These goals help demonstrate the character’s depth, to round them out.
These goals can manifest in little ways: the FBI job is one of my character’s ultimate goals that doesn’t play into the plot of the story. That goal manifests in her hobbies: spy movies and spy novels. They can also come in handy when they play into the character’s motivations. (I’ll spare you the convoluted explanation of how this happens in my story.)
The biggest caution here: make sure this goal doesn’t upstage the main plot. We’ll see how this works out in edits, but I’ve had a little mixed feedback about my character’s dream. Some readers think it’s so important it needs to be mentioned in the very first chapter. And even though that chapter won the contest, at least one judge complained that the very same character didn’t have any dreams or aspirations. (Why, exactly, they thought she needed to think about those dreams and aspirations when dealing with the murder of her priest, I’m not sure.)
However, adding that to the first chapter might make readers think it’s an important part of the plot. It’s not part of the story question for this book. Our first chapter offers a promise of things to come, not a synopsis of the characters’ lives. If we make a promise of this character’s dream, and especially if it’s not fulfilled in this book, we’re setting our readers up for disappointment.
Instead, use goals and dreams to add depth to the characters and the story—from the hobby on up.
How can you better use goals in your writing?
Photo credits: climbing the mountain—Ben Rohrs;
my life in 10 years—lululemon athletica; grab the brass ring—Foxytocin
Posted in Technique
Tagged character goals, characters, goals, internal conflict, scene goals
2 Comments
Stock conflicts to make your conflicts richer
I’ve seen this technique a few times on television shows, and I’d love to think about how to apply it in my fiction.
My kids love the cartoon Phineas and Ferb. The main characters’ older sister, Candace, always tries to get her brothers in trouble for their crazy inventions. She is also 15 and majorly boy crazy, especially for a boy named Jeremy.
Whenever the writers need Candace to do something or go somewhere that she might not otherwise, all they have to do is bring Jeremy into it, even indirectly. Whether she’s shopping for a gift for him, trying to impress him or going to see him, he’s one sure way to motivate Candace.
Jeremy is also great for her internal conflict. She often has to choose between her two biggest goals—be with Jeremy or bust her brothers.
Another example I’ve noticed recently is in Psych. Shawn runs a psychic detective agency with help from his best friend, Gus. However, Gus has another full time job: he’s a pharmaceutical sales rep. His car—the only transportation they have—is a company car (which is comical in its own right). Gus’s job and using the company car are both stock conflicts in the series. If the writers need to add more conflict in the scene or between the main character and his best friend, Gus’s job is their go-to choice (and girls, when they’re both single).
Naturally, in a series (book or TV), you have more opportunities to develop and use these stock conflicts, but I think they can be useful in standalone novels—as long as you keep the conflict fresh.
What do you think? How have you used “stock conflicts” in your work?
Links to make you think
Some links I’ve come across lately that have made me think:
So I worked in search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet marketing for several years, and I know Google can be daunting. Rick Daley has a good guest post on using SEO for authors. My favorite tips are that you need to go beyond your name and book title. You should be ranking for those anyway! Think about what people who are looking for a book like yours might type in to search. You can use tools from search engines to see if people really are using those keywords or similar ones.
Want to really up your productivity? Check out how one author quintupled her daily output. (via @LuisaPerkins via @AnnetteLyon) I’m trying these methods out and I have to say I really like the idea of making all those tiny little decisions BEFORE rather than DURING the actual writing process.
I’m having a lot of conversations with one of my critique partners about setting lately (it’s something we’re both working on), so when I saw this article on active vs. passive backstory/description tweeted, I had to click. Great examples from published novels, too. (Sorry, I couldn’t find who’d tweeted this in my stream 
.)
Edittorrent blogged about Dean Wesley Smith’s latest article on the history of literary agents and whether we need them today. The comments on Smith’s article lead me to Laura Resnick’s website and her three-part series on agents as well as her article on experiences with the agent-author business model. OTOH, I know lots and lots of people who really like working with their agents—people who are getting big book deals, too. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that I’m so glad I don’t have to make this choice right now.
What links are making you think right now?
Nano Redux
So, how was your November? I didn’t want to report on Nano yesterday because I didn’t want to put pressure on the people rushing for the finish line. I hope you made it, too!
As for me, I pretty much beasted Nano. I was actually trying to do Candace Havens’s Fast Draft method, with 5000 words a day, but I was too chicken to admit it publicly. I’d only ever written that much in a day once before.
But, with help from 27,000 words at a writers’ retreat the first weekend of November, I hit 50,000 words on November 8 and kept write right on typing until I reached 78,000+ and THE END on November 14. That’s an average of over 6000 words a day—and I took Sundays off. So that November 30 finish line didn’t mean as much to me this year as it did last year for my Half-no (25,000 words on a WIP).
Now, how was the experience? It would seem like writing that much in a day is insane, awful, grueling, leaving time for nothing else. Candace Havens actually addresses these concerns—you should see the list of all the things she did while pumping out 5000 words a day. Raising three kids five and under, fixing dinner every night and keeping us all in clean underwear doesn’t sound like quite the challenge.
The purpose of fast drafting is to tap into your subconscious understanding of the characters, to get the story on the page, to let the storytelling and character-creating part of your brain take over and run as fast as it can. And in that respect—and the respect of churning out a first draft in two weeks—I’d have to say this was a rousing success.
In fact, this is the most fun I can remember having in a first draft since . . . the book that will be my first published novel. I see a lot of parallels between the two writing experiences. The novels themselves are quite different (though I did manage to bring in an aspect of forbidden love again) but I can see that many of the things I had to work on and revise with that manuscript are the things I’ll have to work on with this one. Which is convenient, since I’ve got experience fixing those!
However, some things fell a part just a little bit too much in my real life—apparently, in November, it’s advisable to wear more than just underwear (okay, that’s advisable year-round), and my children need more face time with me. At this point in my life, the balance can’t go quite this far to writing for very long. I’d be plenty happy with a first draft in three weeks or a month—since my record before this was about two months—especially if it wasn’t quite so stressful on my family.
Oddly enough, though, I got up by about seven and to bed by about midnight every day I fast drafted, but since then—nuh uh. That I could do with a bit more of. I worked very hard to maintain some semblance of structure and routine in the house, and I’m thinking I might get back to that, even though I kind of hated it.
Aaand then there’s the book. It was a fairly decent first draft—easier not to leave too many loose ends when you only wrote the beginning two weeks ago—until I thought “Hm… my heroine’s inner conflict over X is kinda weak, and I’ve always wanted to have a character with X^4 conflict—waaaait a minute, that would work!” And I rewrote the confront-the-conflict scene at about the 5/8ths point . . . but the rest of the book doesn’t reflect that now, and there’s ZIP transition and resolution from that. I know this new conflict is right for the character—I just have to make the rest of the book reflect that. And also fix the boring parts, the confusing parts, the underdeveloped parts . . .
What? Oh, yeah. That’s called revision.
But, hey. I’m ending the month with a publisher, a completed first draft and a ton of fun in the interim. I’m WAY more than okay with that.
Now it’s your turn: tell me, how did your November goals go?
Nano: the finish line!
It’s today! The final push! You can do it! In fact, you may have already. This month has been pretty much the greatest of my writing career. You still have a few more hours to make it yours!
Run Type, type, type!
We’ll share our successes tomorrow so anyone who’s still working won’t feel bad. And if you’ve already hit your 50,000—way to go!—don’t forget to validate on NaNoWriMo.org before midnight so you can claim your winner goodies!
Photo by Jayneandd
Nano motivation: reconnecting with your WIP
I’m sure that at least some of us took off a little time last week to enjoy time with our families. Even during NaNoWriMo, it’s okay—important, possibly even vital—to step away from the computer and connect with reality and the strangers living in your house for a while. It gives us perspective on people—and our work. Not only do we need more material for writing , but we all need some human connection at least sometimes. Plus, time away from our writing gives us time to think, brainstorm, and recover. (I take every Sunday off.)
But now it’s time to get back to work. If you’re thinking ahead, you can leave yourself notes for the next scenes—but sometimes I can’t make sense of or find inspiration from my cryptic notes. Over at Write It Sideways a few weeks ago, they had a great article on 6 Ways to Reconnect 
with Your Work-In-Progress. Most of them apply more to a work you’ve been away from longer—and have more than three days to finish. (By the way, you have three days left, including today.)
So, to adapt their suggestions to a Nano novel:
- Read the last chapter or two you’ve written: I know the Nano site advises not to read back and plunge ahead, but when you’re totally lost, it’s time to take stock of where you were going.
- Reread your outline: tell me you have one. (I do, but the entire first half went pretty far astray from the plan. Okay, and the second half did, too. Um… But hey, I’m totally on-cue for the ending from my outline: “Big, big set piece. Major battle. Looks like villain gets away. Slay the dragon twice, roll out the big guns, and come away victorious, rich, less emotionally scarred, and in love.” Yep. That.)
- Make sure it’s not a story issue: sometimes we have a hard time writing because there’s something wrong with the structure of your story or your characters, but our subconscious hadn’t clued in our conscious mind yet. Make sure that’s not what’s holding you up.
- Recalculating…: If your story or your outline has gone astray, look again at the milestones you originally wanted to hit, like the third plot point or the finale. If you really just want to finish, you could even just squeeze the last 5000 words out of those scenes, and fix it all later. Isn’t that the point of Nano?
- Brainstorm: just out of ideas? Try a brainstorming session like this one described at DIY MFA. Come up with as many ideas as you can. You’re sure to come up with some stinkers, some less useful ones, and some out there ones—but all you need is one or two good ones to get moving again!
- Tap into your inspiration: whether you turn to an image pinboard, a playlist, or a cover—or you can do any of those now!—or you just look back at the things that gave you the ideas that convinced you to write this story, tapping into your inspiration again is a great way to get the creative juices flowing again.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking about pulling out an older novel in December to try to fix, and I’ll probably use several of these tips and the original six to get back into the right mindset for this book.
How do you reconnect with a story after a break?
Photo by Samuel M. Livingston
