Two wonderful blog posts, both courtesy of Alexandra Sokoloff, will prep you for NaNoMo. Cut and paste the links below into your browser:
1. http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/2008/10/story-structure-101-index-card-method.html
2. http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/2011/10/nanowrimo-prep-index-card-method.html
Otherwise click on each using my "Favorite Links" found in my right-hand sidebar.
The first (from October 2, 2008) utilizes index cards to write down short snippets of what scenes you envision now, whether sixty or one-hundred-and-sixty, for your proposed NaNoMo 2011 project. Others will come as you type these up during November.
The second (from October 5, 2011) consists of a homework assignment that involves watching your ten favorite movies, the ones closest to the novel idea you have in mind to draft over November. This exercise helps you map out your story structure, hitting the inciting incident, (at least) three try/fail sequences, the black moment, the climax, the resolution--or whatever you have been taught to call the high-impact moments of your tale.
Alexandra also supports my theory that screenwriting formulas can assist us in our novel writing.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label NaNoMo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NaNoMo. Show all posts
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
NaNoMo
To novelists all over, NaNoMo (or more exactly NaNoWriMo) means National Novel Writing Month and occurs each November as far back as the early 2000s. Its tagline is "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!" Check out www.nanowrimo.org for more details. Click on the link found on the right-hand sidebar under "Favorite Links."
It is a great event. I recommend it. You write like mad for thirty days/nights and hopefully have the bones of a short novel done at the end of the month. In my seat-of-the-pants way of writing, I did just that. And was pleased to see some order of a book, even though I wrote scenes out-of-order as my intuition and imagination led me, placing them where I thought best each day.
Post-NaNoMo, I added in descriptors, of people and places. I beefed up the internal world of conflict with thoughts and emotions. I added clarifying words to sentences and some rhetorical devices to style. That is why I also recommended in an earlier post the great (screen)writing book by Robert McKee called Style (in its truncated title form). Because I was doing more of a screenplay during NaNoMo--hitting all the action and dialogue. It works for me.
As a NaNoMo participant, you post your word count (WC) for each of the thirty days of November. It is a big deal to be among the various authors with WCs greater than 50,000 at the end. Plus there is something about the accountability factor that can spur you on to write--even 250 words--after a grueling ten-hour shift at a day job you have come to despise. And chatting with a fellow NaNoMo author from the Netherlands as you do it.
While searching through the NaNoMo website, I found a NaNoMo 2011 widget you can add to your blog, too. Pretty cool all the way around.
If you don't choose to visibly enter into NaNoMo, that accountability factor works wonders for those who just exchange WC totals daily with a trusted critique partner. However, there is something magical when a mass of authors get together via NaNoMo. I can compare it to watching a football game on TV at home, or being among the crowd at the stadium with the footfalls rattling your seat. What a ride!
And what do you have to lose? Some time working on your dream? Oh yeah, you may lose some TV-watching time, some sleep, but you'll gain momentum as an author, maybe self-confirmation as well. It feels euphoric to type "The End" on page 204 of a book where you wrote it (albeit a rough first draft, double-spaced) to completion. And in a month. One month. Thirty days. Thirty days that will pass regardless. Those calendar pages fold over, gone, without your permission. Whether you wrote those six-and-a-half pages daily average toward the novel that resides in your heart and soul--or not.
Go for it! Whatever your dream . . .
It is a great event. I recommend it. You write like mad for thirty days/nights and hopefully have the bones of a short novel done at the end of the month. In my seat-of-the-pants way of writing, I did just that. And was pleased to see some order of a book, even though I wrote scenes out-of-order as my intuition and imagination led me, placing them where I thought best each day.
Post-NaNoMo, I added in descriptors, of people and places. I beefed up the internal world of conflict with thoughts and emotions. I added clarifying words to sentences and some rhetorical devices to style. That is why I also recommended in an earlier post the great (screen)writing book by Robert McKee called Style (in its truncated title form). Because I was doing more of a screenplay during NaNoMo--hitting all the action and dialogue. It works for me.
As a NaNoMo participant, you post your word count (WC) for each of the thirty days of November. It is a big deal to be among the various authors with WCs greater than 50,000 at the end. Plus there is something about the accountability factor that can spur you on to write--even 250 words--after a grueling ten-hour shift at a day job you have come to despise. And chatting with a fellow NaNoMo author from the Netherlands as you do it.
While searching through the NaNoMo website, I found a NaNoMo 2011 widget you can add to your blog, too. Pretty cool all the way around.
If you don't choose to visibly enter into NaNoMo, that accountability factor works wonders for those who just exchange WC totals daily with a trusted critique partner. However, there is something magical when a mass of authors get together via NaNoMo. I can compare it to watching a football game on TV at home, or being among the crowd at the stadium with the footfalls rattling your seat. What a ride!
And what do you have to lose? Some time working on your dream? Oh yeah, you may lose some TV-watching time, some sleep, but you'll gain momentum as an author, maybe self-confirmation as well. It feels euphoric to type "The End" on page 204 of a book where you wrote it (albeit a rough first draft, double-spaced) to completion. And in a month. One month. Thirty days. Thirty days that will pass regardless. Those calendar pages fold over, gone, without your permission. Whether you wrote those six-and-a-half pages daily average toward the novel that resides in your heart and soul--or not.
Go for it! Whatever your dream . . .
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Milestones in My Life As an Author
First but not acted upon, or even thought of AS a milestone, was my mystery short story, a homework requirement for a junior high English class. (It wasn’t called middle school back then!) My teacher singled out my work as an honorable mention in front of the whole class. The only one, too. I thought, yeah. And moved on. I didn’t even save a copy of it. Where would my writing career be today if I had taken the gift I had from the beginning of my life and started working on developing it and marketing it right away? Well, I’d be further along. Still no reason not to continue on now.
This one event proves how dismissive we are about our unique skills and talents. Don’t do that with yours.
However, I am not sure my writing career would have done too well back then, before the advent of the Indie-publishing avalanche we are in now. Timing. My time seems to be 2011 and into the future. I am one happy woman to participate in, to belong to, this inventive and creative amalgamation of authors who have additional freedoms to invoke.
In my twenties, in the interim between that first and the upcoming second milestone, I wrote some short stories (or more correctly, I wrote stories that stopped at page twenty-five, not ended, but stopped)—none of which I saved apparently, ARGH!—and I was also reading like crazy. Couldn’t get my fill of other peoples’ books. But I often had the response to these stories, “I could do that too” or “I could do that better” or even more amazing and hypnotic, "I don't want the story to end yet. I want to live in it. I want to be surrounded by these people and call them friends." I yearn to write those kind of books.
Second milestone was when I finished a short story and submitted it to a contest. My one and only contest submission. I did not win. Still, I finished a story. Do you know how many people wish to write a story and never do? It may be the number one career goal out there (per one goals coach whose uplifting emails I receive daily). I wish I had written down the exact date of that contest. I may have it somewhere. My best guess is March 1997.
Third milestone for me was finishing a novel-length book in NaNoMo 2009.
Fourth milestone was finishing a second novel. That feat erased the fleeting worry that I was just a one-book wonder.
Fifth milestone was uploading my two nonfiction books to Amazon on March 27, 2011.
Sixth was uploading both nonfiction books to Barnes & Noble on April 27, 2011.
Seventh was receiving my first royalty check on May 27, 2011.
I am working on my eighth . . . .
You should be working on yours as well. Time passes whether you reach for your goals or not. The difference is, just during the first six months of this year, I already have accomplished three milestones. How fantastic is that? By the end of 2011, I hope to add a few more.
Join me.
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