All right, it’s official: I’m doing Nano (aka National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo). Feel free to add me as a buddy on the Nano site. You might be able to find me under the enigmatic name of “JordanMcCollum.”
I’m a loose plotter, so I’m spending the month of October preparing. I’m getting my plot outlined, getting to know my characters, researching the facts and the settings, pondering plot points and villains and subplots and schedules (mine, not the characters’)!
As I’ve worked on all these things, I’ve had to review all my favorite plotting methods and character posts—on others’ blogs, and on my own. So if you’re getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I’ll be sharing tips, strategies and advice to help you get the most out of your Nano experience.
We’ll start with some writing resources on my site that I’ve been thinking about and studying, and I hope they might help you prepare, too.
The plot thickens, my series on plotting, highlights plot structures and methods including the three act structure, Larry Brooks’s story structure, the Snowflake method, the Hero’s Journey, and now Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat (also available as a PDF, but it hasn’t been updated to include the Save the Cat posts).
Creating sympathetic characters—while you can edit a great deal of sympathy into your characters, keeping these things in mind as you write can help you get it right the first time.
Character arcs—last year, this was the series I needed most, specifically this post on finding your character’s arc. (Is it awesome or sad when you find the most amazingly helpful resource was written by you two years ago?)
Backstory—figuring out your character’s lifestory, what to leave out, and where to start your story.
And, depending on how you write, you might be able to try out some new techniques with Deep POV or dialogue—or save those for editing.
Although my normal blog schedule is only 2-3 times a week, I’ll be blogging a little extra as we prep for Nano to try to share the resources and inspiration I’ve been saving up!
Are you NaNoing? What are you doing to prepare?
Reposted from Nano 2011
