28 October 2006

NaNoWriMo 2006 (T – 3 Days and Holding)

Commence NaNo Ignition Sequence.

Although not as massively outlined as Scott Oden's bouncing 37 page Orc synopsis extravaganza, or Gabriele's well thought plot, complete with pictures, I ended up with 15 pages of outline, two of which are backstory for the main characters – basically everything that leads up to where I open the story.

I have 25 chapters with 2-5 scenes in each chapter. There is a short paragraph describing each scene, enough to get the idea of what I want to accomplish in that chapter, and enough to see where I need to plant things for later on. I can see some trouble spots but I went ahead and left them in, because for NaNo, overwriting is a good thing. I don't feel at all 'constrained' by the outlining I've done as a friend commented. Instead I feel excited and a bit liberated from the task of plotting as I go. I'm ready to roll.

Now the purpose is to keep myself on track with the scene outlines and not nitpick. For practice I have been giving myself assignments to write little backstory pieces on the main characters. It helps prime the pump, and some of writing will probably make its way into the final draft.

My main purpose for doing NaNo is to find some ways of plowing through and finishing what I set out to write. My other WiP, The Gate To Paradise suffers from a lot of stop and start because I went into it without outlining. I found my first draft of it on the comp and the story is totally different, although the characters are the same. It took me about half a book to realize that I had the wrong protagonist and whose story it really was. In the interests of expediency, I decided I needed to figure out how to plan my novels. It's a giant leap from planning a 40-80 line poem to planning a 100K novel, but the mechanics are the same.

My last mission will be to learn to muzzle the internal editor, the one that wants to comb back through previously written sections and nitpick, grammar check, rewrite and rearrange. I may be forced to shove the editor in the same place my closet perfectionism comes from. I'm glad I outlined and am ready to go, because I'll be out of town at training until November 2nd. I'm bringing my laptop with me. The minute training is done on the 1st, I'll be putting fingers to the keyboard. Wish me luck, my ADD brain is going to need it.

NaNo 06 Novel:
The God Hunter
When a woman conceives a child by a god she ends up with the means to not only destroy her kingdom but also the father of her visionary daughter.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lol, well thought plot isn't exactly what I have since the most important pieces fell into place only those last days. Usually I have a phase outline by end of October (a paragraph per scene) and not vague ideas what I want to go into the book.

But well, it's Nano, isn't it?

And I have an idea for the beginning scenes, which is important. I'm one of those writers who need to find the right starting point early or I'll get stuck.

Anonymous said...

Hm, evil Blogger hiding comments again until one makes a second one? Let's see.

Constance Brewer said...

Okay, you have a reasonable facimile of a plot. :)
For once, I have no real idea of an end,just some vague ideas, I usualy know the end before I start, so this should get interesting.
It's NaNo, No Guts, No Glory...