Hi all!
A reminder: we’re quickly approaching the tail end of September. For folks who want to participate in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the event’s just a little more than a month away. (It kicks off at midnight on November 1.) Planners* are either gearing up to prep for the event, or have already started prep.
I’ve already started.
[* Planners: people who like to plan, outline, or otherwise do extra work before starting. Pantsers: people who like to write “by the seat of their pants”, no outline and minimal (if any) planning. Sometimes called “discovery writers”.]
In most previous years, I either pantsed it starting on 11/1 (2014 in particular), or spent October preparing. Every year, it felt like inadequate preparation, until 2020 when I started prep on Labor Day instead. For the first time, I felt like I had the room to explore everything I wanted to before November started.
So this year, even though I’ve been up to my ears (or, possibly, over my head) in revision on another project, I started preparing for November the week after Labor Day. What does that mean?
This year is a little different, for me. I’m rewriting, from scratch, a series starter. It went a bit off the rails when I wrote it in Camp a couple years ago, and I set it where my sibling’s family lived at the time. I was visiting regularly, and it let me inject some local color. They moved to a new state, though not so far away as to disrupt everything, but I need to rehome it and fix the utterly broken story.
I also put placeholders in for most of the names, which I tend to do when either -a- characters introduce themselves in the middle of scenes, or -b- I haven’t really explored the story enough to know who is going to be needed.
This gives me three things to focus on for preparation.
First, story shape. This one is easy, it’s a specific paranormal romance, and I have a handy beat sheet guide that worked well the first time around. This gives me the major milestones to hit the genre the way I want, and a good benchmark to see if the scenes meet the requirements. Being paranormal rather than straight romance, and being heavily inspired by specific world-heavy authors like Nalini Singh and Ilona Andrews, I do have to adapt the approach for some beats and leave room for the non-romance storyline. As I’ve talked about before, I found a specific act breakdown to work well (for me). My trifold’s marked out, and I’ve got a stack of post-its ready to go once I’ve brainstormed enough scenes.
(I’ve also reviewed what I wrote before, to find things I know for sure I want to keep. The opening scenes, for instance, will be rewritten but I absolutely want to keep the imagery and the core moments.)
Second, local research. I’m moving the location, and while I’ve visited sibling’s family in the new town, it was during the pandemic and I don’t have a feel for the locality yet. Most of the time was spent at their house, which is in no way representative of the whole. I had some scenes set in very specific, real world locations. I’ve been looking for equivalents, but not everywhere has one. And the differences between the two cities are striking enough that some things might not apply at all.
(Also, I need a new home base for the bad guys, since there isn’t a similarly convenient location that works.)
Third, names. People. Characters with actual backgrounds. And an eye toward not being, you know, entirely stock. Or, frankly, white. Plus, being contemporary and recognizably now, things that make sense for people in their 20s. (Baby Name lists from the late 90s and early 00s helps, especially since the popular names have shifted quite a bit from my classmates.)
(I did come up with a cute idea for the names of three brothers, their sister, and two cousins, which are all city names. And there’s a pattern, and it’s fun. Heh. Also, the old guy who owns the bar and his (deceased) wife. Three of the villains. But there are whole ranks of multiple shifter packs left to fill out.)
If you’re feeling a little lost, but want to participate in NaNoWriMo, the official site has a whole section devoted to prep. But there is absolutely no requirement whatsoever to prepare. November’s a delightfully chaotic month, and for many half the fun is the discovery. At least five of my Camp and November projects started with very little preparations, and for all of them, I found all sorts of cool things as I pantsed my way through.
Note: the Write On! community typically runs our own, unofficial Daily Kos Writing Month (DaKoWriMo) in January, which works out better for many schedules.
Happy Writing!
Discussion Question: What preparation have you found you need? What preparation do you do well? Wish you did better? Do you work best without any planning? Have you found any resources that have made writing easier for you?
Writing exercise: 150 words of planning that goes very, very wrong.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
If you’re not already following Readers and Book Lovers, please go to our homepage (link), find the top button in the left margin, and click it to FOLLOW GROUP. Thank You and Welcome, to the most followed group on Daily Kos. Now you’ll get all our R&BLers diaries in your stream.