NaNoWriMo will be upon us next month, and so for a lot of people, October is National Novel Prep Month.
(I’m mainly going to hype my writing in an anthology this month… and also work on some scriptwriting).
But let’s say you haven’t written a novel before and were anxious about it and were wondering about what will work and what won’t work and what will work for you…
Well, since I featured one Vlog brother during Banned Books Week, I might as well feature the other one now:
Okay, so, what would my takes be?
Characters vs. Plot
Of course, you need both. The key is where you start and I know of writers who use one or other to get a story going. Not only that, the same writer may need a good plot hook to get one story going where they’ll need a compelling character to get into another story.
The one thing I definitely want to echo from Green’s advice above is it’s a love for the characters that provides fuel. For my short story “Final Delivery” in the anthology linked above, it was naturally the plot I came up with first, but it was the characters that made it fun and ring true as I was writing. For Rogue Tyger, that’s also a very plot-heavy series at present (what with all the cliffhangers), but it’s crafting and deepening the characters and figuring out how they’ll deal with various situations that makes me want to fire up ye olde computer again. Loving the characters, even if the characters are not lovely, can see you through any plot.
Binge Writing vs. Daily Ritual
If I say “only daily ritual” then I will be completely lying to you because many of my scripts, like Nostromo 2 were finished thanks to an intense, sleep-depriving binge session.
However, that’s because we had a very real deadline to perform said script.
But I’ll point again to something specific Hank Green mentions in the video about needing to work on the story steadily through a given week otherwise he forgets the story. Simply put: you want your brain to be thinking about your story when you’re not writing. It will solve problems and make connections like your muscles heal back stronger after a workout. It’s wonderful.
This is why I will forever advocate reading Cory Doctorow’s article about writing 20 minutes a day, because being able to do that is how you get through huge chunks of writing like a novel or a season’s worth of scripts.
Writing is not always writing
While I completely agree about this, I’m still an advocate of “showing up” for those regular writing sessions. And remember, that 20 minutes or hour or 1-2 hours can be at the same time or different times, depending on your everyday life level of crazy, just so long as you regularly show up. I try and make it be around the same time and I know I’m not the only person who benefits from that schedule, but I also know there’s a reason why I or other binge write because that’s when we have time.
My point is that showing up specifically to put words on paper has to be in the mix. If that session is just staring at the keyboard or thinking, then I advocate doing so many of the other things he’s talking about from researching to re-reading your work, etc. so that you can put words on paper. I’m not concerned about word count, just words on paper, steadily, inevitably (moo hoo ha ha ha).
Time Writes the Book
I mean, that’s what I mentioned above, so I agree. Ya just gotta keep putting words up there. You’ll read no end of people who say the first draft is crap no matter who you are. If you need to hear that so you won’t edit while your write, fine. If you need to not believe that because otherwise you won’t write, don’t believe it. Just get all the words you need on the page. Put it in the time.
How to Plot
Writing is re-writing, so I love his idea of having a guide of “things to change” so he doesn’t mess with his flow.
My method of plotting likely deserves its own post, but the short version I equate to outlining high-level enough to head in what seems to be the right direction for the given story and only tightening the screws of scenes when I need to so I don’t need to re-do stuff, but if I do –hey, they’re screws, not nails. It’s like when you’re building a flat for theater scenery and–
Okay, I’ll save all that for later.
The Characters Have to be Real
Don’t disagree at all, but sometimes I’m the DM observing the player characters do their thing and sometimes the story demands I throw a hazard in their way… or, y’know, have them die a horrible death.
As long as things are truthful.
Don’t Write Linear if You Don’t Want To
This goes back into some of my plotting. For any given story, I might have whole scenes totally written that are in Episode 27 because that’s what excited me to write the story.
I have written the last scene of the entire series, Rogue Tyger. Will I rewrite it? Almost certainly — given all the scenes and episodes I’ll write between now and then. But, damn, it was fun to write.
Don’t Ignore Your Passions When Writing
“Write what you know” is an aphorism that definitely deserves its own post to pull apart, but here I also wholeheartedly agree: put your passion and truth into your writing, don’t close it off. To paraphrase Dr. Spock, “You can write more than you think because you know more than you think.”
Hope you enjoyed the video and some wheels are turning in your brain. I’ll be back each Monday this month with more NaNoWriMo prep.