Tag: NaNoWriMo

5 Thoughts from Winning NaNoWriMo for the First Time, and What’s Next

I did it! I started this month with zero words in my novel Alchemist of Heroes, and on Saturday, I finished with 50,076 words in my novel. A few notes from my NaNoWriMo experience:

1. Don’t quit, even if the book you are writing is terrible. I spent the second weekend of NaNoWriMo worrying about what to do about my novel. My plot was stuck, I had no idea where to go from here or how to make it believeable. I didn’t like my main character because she was too passive. I thought about just starting my book over again with a different angle. But I didn’t. On Monday, I just did a five year time jump and kept going. And I started to like my book again. But I got plot-blocked at least two more times during the month, where I had no idea how to write what my outline said I was supposed to write next. One of the most valuable things I learned from NaNo was to keep writing and not worry about how it would turn out and if the writing would be worth it. I ignored self-doubt and kept going, and it turned out better than I thought. By writing through to the end, I found that it is normal and expected to feel like whatever you are currently working on is terrible. Finish it first, then decide if it’s terrible.

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NaNoWriMo Week 2 Debrief

Been feeling pretty good this week. Got tired by Friday but a break all day Saturday has me fired up to go again. About 1000 words behind my personal timeline, but ahead of the NaNoWriMo website goal, so I’ll call it even. Notes from this week:

  • The details of my magic system are finally coming to me as I’m writing situations in which my characters have to use it. I guess discovery writing does work. I’m really happy with the way it’s coming together, as one of my biggest fears about fiction writing is not having any ideas.
  • Though I love my favorite writing podcasts, I found that listening to good fiction right before writing made it easier to start. I’ve been listening to Howl’s Moving Castle this week and I’ve been much more productive. (Also, incidentally, Dianna Wynne Jones is clearly a discovery writer with a meandering plot and she doesn’t explain tons about the magic and yet it works so well. Very heartening.)
  • For writing scenes with lots of dialogue, I have found it easier to spew out a lot of lines of discussion and ideas I want to include and then go back and add in the stage directions and who says what. As I do, the dialogue also gets refined.
  • Everyone has crappy first drafts. Even Brandon Sanderson. Keep going so you’ll at least have something to fix.

NaNoWriMo Week 1 Debrief

Well, I ended the first week of NaNoWriMo with exactly 10,000 words, only 400-ish words behind my personal timeline. Doing my first NaNo has been both easier and more terrifying than I thought it would be. Easier in that laying down a specific scene hasn’t been too bad, but harder in that making up the details of the world building is still really difficult for me. More short lessons from the first week.

  • It’s true that you can do anything for 15 minutes. Sprints force me to stop thinking about things and just put some words on the paper. I’m always surprised what ideas come up when I just press forward. Then 5-10 minutes of planning in between sprints let me recover and reincorporate those new ideas towards the original outline.
  • Writing with peer pressure makes a difference. The sprints channel in our Seattle NaNo discord has been a lifesaver for me for instant competition any time of day to push me to actually get to work.
  • I broke the outline again. And again. I’m becoming more and more of a pantser every day of this NaNo. We’ll see where this leads.
  • Listening to history can give you great ideas. I pulled a Great Courses lecture series on French Revolution to listen to during NaNo, since I wanted to base some of the overall historical narrative on it. The little details, though, are proving ridiculously helpful in sparking new scenes.
  • I should have spent more outlining time defining some settings. My story didn’t have a tight enough focus to be set in one place as originally planned. I should have spent more time on inventing locations rather than world-building countries. Visualizing things in my head is not a strong suit so the locations have definitely been a struggle.

NaNo Prep 2019 Recap: Lessons of a First-Time Fiction Writer

  • World-building is hard. I almost wanted to give up and write a realistic novel because it would be so nice to just do some research and come up with a right answer. Deciding on details past the initial idea is super difficult, without relying too much on classic cliches. Kudos to all the scifi/fantasy writers who make this look effortless.
  • If you don’t like the way your book is going, you can change it! And the sooner you scrap what you don’t like, the more time you have to spend on what you do like. I had plotted out a whole war between three nations in my book. Then my book started morphing into a depressing war novel that I didn’t want to write. Saving that plot somewhere else and starting over was a great choice.
  • Plots require both internal and external action. After scrapping the war, I tried to re-outline my book and found that nothing was happening in it. My main character was still making internal progress because a lot of the plotting advice I was following focused on character arcs. But there was nothing to happen on screen while my character worked on her insecurities. I had to swing my planning away from character for a while to focus on having something happen.
  • Novel planning is a balance between planning and pantsing, even if you are otherwise a heavy planner. In other areas of my life, I have a spreadsheet for everything. After a few false starts with more organized plot methods, I ended up using the snowflake method to plot my book. And the steps where you expand the summary of your book (steps 2, 4, & 6) inevitably led me off in weird directions which turned into whole subplots of the book. The difference between plotters and pantsers is when they take these diversions, not if they take them.
  • Don’t give into the first hour anxiety. Everything you do looks terrible in that first hour because it’s hard to get back into it. Stick with it into the second hour and you’ll fall in love again.

Tomorrow is the big day! I’m terrified but excited.

3 Tools for NaNoWriMo Fantasy Writers, Including the Best Map Maker Ever

As I’ve prepped for NaNoWriMo this month, I’ve discovered something: worldbuilding is hard.

Well-thought-through worlds and logical magic systems are some of my favorite parts of the fantasy genre. Until I tried to make one. It is hard! So much work goes into making up a lot of things that will never go on the page, but that you need as background to even start creating a plot.

My respect goes out to those epic world builders who make this process look effortless. I am not one of those. I don’t have fully formed fantasy worlds and ideas just lying around, and I need to come up with them fast. (NaNo cometh!)

I’ve found a few tools this month that have allowed me to take lots of shortcuts (shh!) in getting my fantasy world into shape and let me spend more time on characters and plot:

  1. Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator – Exactly like the title says, this is a fantasy map generator, but it’s really so much more! Not only can you choose the type of map you need (Civilization style–continents, archipelego, etc.) and how many countries, but you can set the number of religions and cultures you want. You can select a base language structure for the names of each country/culture and it will name all the rivers and towns for you, give you historical sites, show you the boundaries on different religions and give you a basic structure. Then you can customize the random map with drawing tools. Not only is it nice to have a map, but the generated religions and cultures can give you great ideas for plot conflict: why is this country split into two different cultures and what do they disagree about?
  2. TV Tropes – If you want to know about a cliche idea in television or literature, it’s here. This was a great way for me to look up what elemental magic systems had been done before and their variations. I found some interesting ideas that I was able to pull into my work. Also great for finding out what promises you’re making to your reader by picking certain tropes so you can either fulfill or play with audience expectations. And I feel like the random trope button is going to be a great tool for when I get stuck during NaNoWriMo. Instant plot idea! Just don’t let the fact that everything has been done before get to you.
  3. Springhole’s Random Generators – This site has random generators for so many different things. I’ve specifically been using the character flaws and motivations ones as I brainstorm characters other than the main character idea I had to start with. They have generators for everything. So helpful in getting creative juices flowing.

So those are the things saving my (writing) life right now. I had to throw out my novel’s plot last week and start over, as it started to become a depressing war novel that I didn’t want to write. But I’m soldiering on.

How’s your NaNoWriMo (or other project) going right now?