I spent a good amount of time exploring a few ideas for NaNoWriMo today. I’m still tempted to do it this year but if I don’t organise it before it starts it’ll never get going. I need at least a loose framework from which to build the story.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in a month (Hence National Novel Writing Month). Starting at midnight on 1st November and ending on 30th November your challenge, if you wish to take it on, is to write at least 50,000 words by midnight on 30th November. 1667 words per day for 30 days.
It’s a great challenge which has writer scribing all over the world. The supporting website offering tips and tricks to help you reach the target and lists writing groups near you in case you want to share the pain. I’ve found the most inspiring people track their progress on YouTube. And while some keen writers don’t fret that by day 20 they haven’t reached 33k words at that point. They will just crank them out and skip over the finish line with 2 minutes to spare treating it like a deadline to a university dissertation. While others will diligently type over the minimum amount until they panic that by 10th November they are already at 100k written.
I’m afraid I have never got to those dizzying heights of production. I’m one of those who, even without my editing mode on, will struggle most days to get the minimum amount but I will do it, even if some days it takes me over two hours or more to complete the words and half of them make no sense.
I am torn this year between writing a fanfic (although part of me still thinks I’m far too old for doing that now), writing a non-fiction book made up of 30 chapters, expand on an old fiction story I have previously started or work on a completely new one. Decisions, decisions!
To figure out which of the options will take me the furthest over the thirty days I’ve started to write down as many ideas as possible for each one asking myself a few questions as I go along:
- What is the message I’m trying to share? Whether fiction or not.
- Why do I want to write about this?
- Similar to no. 3 – what is the ultimate conclusion going to be?
- What would my characters look like and how would they behave in each idea?
- Is there a particular setting I want to include to make the story more compelling?
- With fiction – what time period do I want to focus on and how will I demonstrate it?
- Who would want to read my story or book?
By exploring each of the questions above I hope to expand the ideas into one achievable story goal that I love enough to want to drag it to the finish line with me.
From answering the above questions I can then build a six part plot line that will give me that all important framework from which to write from. It sounds a lot easier than it actually is. Much more thinking and planning is required yet!
Thank you for reading.
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