Tips for NaNoWriMo-What You Can Do Before November

Halloween is fast coming upon us. For many people it means carving pumpkins, wearing costumes and passing out candy. But for some writers, it marks the last day before November, better known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are one these writers, taking advantage of this time to do some preliminary work on your new novel will save you time while you are in the thick of NaNoWriMo. Below are some tips to get you prepared for November:

• Write out the story goals in detail. What is at stake? Get a sense of the larger picture and the personal picture. What does the character want? What would it mean for the story if she gets it? What would it mean if he doesn’t?

• Create a plot outline.  Some writers are meticulous planners, which helps them stay on track. Other writers are “free-writers” who prefer the spontaneity that comes from not knowing what going to happen next. I would suggest something in-between: a broad outline of the plot, so that you have an idea of where you need to go with the story, but still have room for experimentation and discovery.

• Get to know your characters now.  This will alleviate the time you’ll spend during NaNoWriMo guessing at your character’s responses to important decisions and how they should act when they encounter unexpected challenges in the story. 
  
  
  

• Design the world ahead of time. Or at least, have a good idea of the environment your characters are going to exist in. This will save you from getting bogged down in world building during NaNoWriMo.  Hone in on the details of the world, including weather, geography, people, and objects, letting these details reveal the character who would be observing or experiencing them. And although this world may be very familiar to your readers, describe it in a way that is unfamiliar, strange or foreign. In other words, let the unfamiliarity and unique perspective of the character seeing it for the first time come through.  If the story is set in an exotic, strange or alien place, try to describe it as if it was familiar, demonstrating the ordinariness of the world.
  
  
  

• Do any preliminary research that you think you’ll need to know, or at least have on hand. Research can easily become a black hole and make you lose momentum while in your NaNoWriMo groove.  While you can’t anticipate every piece of research you’ll need, you might be able to do a little research to help you understand how to get your character to a particular plot point or what the motivation is behind a character’s action.

• Start setting aside time to write now. Get into some kind of writing regiment (you can do these exercises to fill that time), so that when November starts, your NaNoWriMo efforts won’t feel like a sudden shift in your daily life.

• Set up a support system with other writers. There are some great resources and blogs about National Novel Writing Month, but start with the official NaNoWriMo site first.  Sign up for free and get help and support in just about any aspect of your NaNoWriMo experience, from planning to staying motivated throughout the month.
  
  
  

In following these tips, you’ll be able to start your new novel with a more grounded picture of the world and a clearer understanding of your characters. And if you are only able to do just some of these exercises, you'll still be better equipped to handle the challenge of writing every day in November. 50,000 words can seem daunting but a little preparation can not only give you a good start, it can help you maintain your writing momentum and keep you on track to meet your NaNoWriMo goals.

From Pantser to Plotter

Relentless Writer's EXCLUSIVE and world wide web debut!

Here for your viewing pleasure is my first ever SlideShare! :D
Click through the slides and delve deep into the wild world of plotting!
(You can maximize the slide display to up the wow factor ;)

Enjoy!



In gratitude,
Marissa Campbell xo

AVELYNN

Forthcoming debut novel by Marissa Campbell

Coming from St. Martin's Press, September 8, 2015!

Anglo-Saxon England. Ambition, lust, and betrayal weave their fateful threads through Avelynn’s destiny. Against the political back drop of Alfred the Great’s war against the Vikings, AVELYNN brings the Dark Ages to light and illuminates one woman’s struggle to fight for what she believes in.

The Thing about Love

I went through a phase of reading romance novels of all shapes and sizes (from regency to Mills&Boon stuff). Then I moved on to crime stories, science fiction, and back to the fantasy novels that started my love of reading in the first place. Recently, I've gotten my hands on a couple of thrillers and what's called "romantasy" (romance + fantasy)(yes really, that's what the bookshelf is called in my local bookstore). 

All these books, and I really do mean ALL these books, have one common factor:

Love is in the Air. 

(John Paul Young)

I don't think I've read a single book (of the story-telling variety) in the past decade that does not include a love story at some level - and this is the question I'm posing today. When's the last time you came across a book that did not have a love story of some sort as a plot line?  

Certainly, all the ideas running around in my head have love as a subplot at the very least. To love (or to lose love, as the case may be) is such an essential part of the human condition that it wriggles its way into the most unlikely of storylines. Even most thrillers (those few that don't involve the detective coming across a love interest) have some (usually perverted) form of love in them. Even most horror stories I can think of involve some form of love, however confused it may be (just think of the protagonist's blond cheerleading/football playing crush that gets conveniently killed off to further the plot)(ok so that's mostly in the movies but what the hey)(or the gloriously distorted love portrayed in Stephen King's Misery). 

Given that love plays such a large part in storytelling as a whole, it's amazing how different portrayals of this one single emotion can be - and by that I don't mean the different (often genre-induced) kinds of love, but the specific details a writer can put down on paper. The tendency seems to be towards explicitness, no matter what the genre. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a nice love scene or two or three, but I do think that the level of intimacy needs to be appropriate to the type of story. 

One does not, in general, read a thriller purely to get a thrill out of the detective having a grand old time with his girlfriend/boyfriend/one-night-stand. On the other hand, if I'm reading a romance, love on an emotional AND physical level better be the main event. Love scenes, like all other scenes and plot elements, should never, ever, be in the story just for the sake of including them - even in a romance. 

A story is not a checklist of obligatory scenes. 

If I read about the protagonist's sex life, it better have something to do with his character, someone else's character or the plot in general. Otherwise, why should I care if he or she has sex or not? 

That said, a character's psyche is a very important part of any story, and insofar as love is one of the most essential and inescapable emotions a human being can show, it's not something a writer should ignore. Any emotion adds to a character, and the more three-dimensional you can portray your character, the more he'll seem real to the reader. Nobody likes cardboard-cutout people, right? 

Right. 

So let's have a show of hands, then: 

Do you have a love story in the story you're writing? Is it plot essential/character essential? How story-appropriate do love scenes need to be - is it ok to go for the thrill of it, just because?  

Can you think of any other emotional plot lines/plot points that feature in almost all stories you can think of, or is love the only one that's universally applicable? 

Plotting VS Pantsing SMACKDOWN!

     Welcome to the my first SMACKDOWN! Today I want to take a look at the two processes of writing:

PLOTTING:

Mario, Super Smash Bros Wii U

and

PANTSING:

Link and Yoshi, Smash Bros Wii U

Let our combatants duke it out!

PANTSING:

I want to start with pantsing because it's the process I'm most familiar with. That's right, I'm a pantser. Why? Pantsing seems easy, to begin with. There are minimal notes and not a whole lot of research. Pansting is, by definition, flying be the seat of your pants. In fact, Wikinano defines pantsing as this: Pantsing (also known as winging it) is the term Wrimos use refering to writing without a fixed outline (an outline that the writer will force themselves to follow). A Wrimo who adopts the pantsing approach to writing is called a pantser. 

Pantsing usually occurs when a character, or a plot, pulls at the writer and must be told. Sometimes it can come from a scene, or an ending that the author simply can't get out of their mind. That's how it works for me. I see a storyline, I find my ending and I simply have to write it. I may take a few notes along the way, post-it notes are my best friend, but it's characters and a world that calls so strongly that I don't feel like I have time to write a ton of notes or outlines.

I live in a structured world. My husband is very structured. He likes things in their proper places, at all times. He likes to know where we're going, when we're going and roughly how long we're going to be gone. That's great, in life that structure works. We're rarely late, and the house is in perfect order. I, on the other hand, by nature live in an organized chaos. I choose this on purpose. I don't often care for structure because life doesn't always go according to plan. Same with my writing. I don't want to micromanage my characters. I get enough of that in real life. I like them to be free. I want them to tell their own story in their own way, and it works, but it's not without its faults. Sometimes it opens huge plot holes and character discrepancies that have to be addressed during editing. 

Here are some of my tips on pantsing:

1. Know your genre- I think this is true of both plotting and pantsing. Know who you're writing for. If you think your writing for YA, but the character you're seeing is middle grade, your story is going to come out middle grade. Be aware ahead of time the group you're writing for and what style you're writing. It'll save you a lot of re-writes in the long run.

2. Know your setting- You had a vision of the ending scene of your story. Great. Now you have to figure out the important parts that you're going to need to go back to the story and tell it from the beginning. There are a few parts that every pantser needs to know in advance. Where is your story told? What time is it being told in? If the story starts in the south of France and moves to Kentucky without your character ever boarding a plane, you've got a problem and a lot of rewrites. As carefree as we want pantsing to be, there does need to be a little forethought. 

3. Know your characters- Do you need to write a big bubble outline of every character trait your MC has? I never have. I see the basics of my character. Blonde hair, blue eyes, maybe a little snarky or like Sherlock Holmes (the Robert Downey Jr. version). Great. Write those down. Most of the time your character will develope their own peronality as you write, but it helps to have a few notes so you don't forget, if you step away, that your character has minty green eyes and silvery lilac hair. 

4. Keep writing- This is tough because sometimes in pansting it's easy to get stuck on a plot hole. There are times where you want to take a step back, or when you have to take a step back and then you re-read and you think I hate all of this and want to erase it all and start over. Don't. Pantsing is really about editing. It's about getting the words out of your head and onto paper because your character is screaming to have his/or her story told. Don't stop writing. If you get stuck, skip ahead to a scene you are ready to write and come back, but don't re-read and re-write. Get it all out, then go back and make changes. Keep the momentum. 

You aren't alone. Nora Roberts said, "I never know where my story is going. I sit down at the computer to find out."

Point: Pantsing.

Link Final Smash, Super Smash Bros Wii U

PLOTTING:

By now you're probably thinking she's biased. She's a pantster and she chose Link (her favorite video game character) to represent pansting. How can she objectively look at plotting? 

Well, I've plotted. My first three complete manuscripts I pantsed, but the time finally came where I felt the need to plot. Plotting requires a lot of work. There are spreadsheets and color codings. Robison Wells posted a picture on facebook once of those big science poster boards with a crazy flow chart of arrows and colors for a novel he was working on. Holy Hannah. The thought of all of that work on top of writing and editing blows my mind, but it is often needed. There are a lot of people who have crazy schedules, who aren't stay at home mom's that can write when the kids take naps or go outside to play. A lot of authors have a job or two plus a household to run. Keeping track of a storyline can just add to the already piled workload. That's where plotting and outlining come in.

Plotting and outlining have great resources. Pinterest has helped when searching for the perfect look for a character, or a setting I couldn't quite see. Scrivener has a lot of tools to help take notes or keep track of ideas. Some prefer paper over computer programs. Old school bubble outlines are my preferred method, but whatever method you choose, plotting helps structure and keep organized while writing.

When plotting and outlining for my last ms, I noticed that I knew the ending. The characters had birthdates and astrological signs that pointed to personality traits. Settings weren't just a vision in my head but an actual place that I could research or tour and make notes along the way. I knew all of the plot structure so there was a lot less guessing and stepping away. Was it easier? I don't know. They both felt like they were easy and hard at times, but it was nice to have the notes ahead of time to go back to whenever I got stuck.

Here are a few of my tips for plotting:

1. Get a Pinterest account- I've already said it, but I want to say it again. Pinterest is incredibly helpful for envisioning characters and setting. Create a storyboard to post to. Identify the characters and who they are. Post pictures of outfits, houses, beautiful scenery and anything else that's going to help the story. Why? Because sometimes it's easier to picture if you can already see it. 

2. Find a program that works for you- Maybe Scrivener and Excel are the programs for you with spreadsheets and color coding. Maybe you prefer writing it out by hand with bubbles or bullets. Or maybe you're the kind of person who likes dozens of posterboards stretched out across the room with colors and lines and every point possibly in the ms. Doesn't matter so long as it works for you and don't get discouraged if  the first way you try doesn't work. Keep trying until you find the one that does.

3. Do your research- Plotting and outlining requires research. It's what makes plotting and outlining what they are. It helps the writing to run smoothly and allows the author to be able to step away for a while and come back knowing exactly where they were and where they were going. Plotting and outlining require discipline. Know your characters inside and out, know the world you're creating, know where your story is going. That's why outlining is useful and helps when life gets too busy or for people who just like structure. It may only be a line or two about the plot, but it keeps you on track. If research isn't your thing, try pantsing.   

A lot of well known authors are known for their plotting such as J.K. Rowling, Sylvia Plath and Norman Mailer.

Point: Plotting

Mario final smash, Super Smash Bros Wii U

There is no right or wrong way. Pantsing may work for one story and not with another. Some people may always pants, others may always plot. Find what works for you. Experiment with both types and go with whatever feels more natural. Don't pick one because someone tells you it works better, or they wouldn't ever use the other. Just like every writer and every book, every process is different.

Mario and Link, Super Smash Bros Wii U

Do you have a preferred method? Any other tips you'd like to share? Have opinions on my next smackdown? Leave them in the comments below and look for the next Relentless Writer's post Thursday!