NaNoWriMo Support Group discussion

I remember reading advice to start in March, if not earlier, planning for a Nanowrimo novel.

With that time frame, I should be getting ready for both Camp Nanowrimo and Nanowrimo now. I'm assuming from the "about" page on Camp Nanowrimo that it's going to be in April at the earliest. They are still saying there will be two, the other in July. I'm setting my calendar now :).

So, when do you start planning for your Nanowrimo related novel, and what do you do to prepare?

Theresa

I can't comment on the timing. For Camp NanoWriMo last year, I started the month before, but for November, I began planning in September.

But I can tell you what I do to prepare:

1. Develop theme
2. Rough Outline
3. Character sketches
4. Location details
5. Sketch out outline details

Steps 3 and 5 take the longest, but without them, I'd never make my word count.

I think up the title about 6 months before (but not on purpose). Then I completely forget about the whole thing (but not on purpose). I start vaguely preparing in October (along the lines of "oh no! it's next month!" ha ha), then only get an idea for the actual content about a week beforehand.

Ros

Ros wrote: "I think up the title about 6 months before (but not on purpose). Then I completely forget about the whole thing (but not on purpose). I start vaguely preparing in October (along the lines of "oh ..."

Hahaha! Love this!

I'm a pantser I don't plan much I have a general idea of what I'm going to write about but don't know for sure until I sit down and begin typing.
Usually don't know until about a month before what I plan to write about.

I am also mostly a pantser, so 2-3 days before the month starts, I pick my idea out, and I meander around the internet thinking about it, letting it percolate. Then, I start to brainstorm my main character -- bullet points, only -- and I throw up the vaguest of outlines, and then it's the 1st, and I start to write.

This year, I fleshed out the outline as I went, to track where I'd been and where I was going in my story, and built an in-depth character profile of my MC when I was bored/blocked. I drew maps to help me keep track of the layout and where the character travelled to, and when the novel was mostly finished, drew a plot "map" that was colour-coded by location and showed an overview of the plot by mapping negative and positive change in the MCs life.

This all makes me sound like a plotter, but it was all mid-stream, happening as I pantsed my way through my novel.

I started in mid-October.
I mean, the book had been rolling around in my head for a year, but a couple of weeks prior I started giving my characters names and developing them a little and did some outlining in writing (again, much of it was in my head and I just had to pen it).
Of course, I only got about 6 days of working on my novel during the month, so I need to figure out how to motivate myself to pick it back up.
But I did get many thousands of words done on some other pieces. (It's not that I wasn't writing at all)

I'm a crazy OCD planner. I use the Snowflake Method (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com...) to begin planning in mid-September. I just started this past week. Getting excited!

Yay! answers and ideas :) I haven't thought of an idea yet for this year. I am digging through some of my old writing, and trying to get those going again, but nothing really new has popped into my head yet.

Part of the reason I have cratered so much is that I'm a pantser, not a plotter, and I get easily distracted with new ideas and things.

One of my goals is to be and stay more organized. I am now working on my writing and my calendar - read somewhere that a good idea is to schedule your writing specifically - do this scene/amount-of-pages today and that one tomorrow, for example. Plus doing 500 words at least on the story I'm supposed to be writing before writing anything else.

But that also means - yeep - the dreaded outline. Kind of like horse pills, that you know are good for you, but aren't fun to swallow? That's how I feel about outlines. But I don't get anything accomplished without them, so I need to learn to love them.

Hope to see everyone here come November :).

Theresa

Hi Laurel :).

How's it going with the Snowflake Method? I enjoy his newsletters, but I don't think I've ever used his method all the way through. I might look into that this week.

I'd love to hear any techniques writers have for getting and staying organized. For at least once in my life, I'd love to be able to say I've won Nanowrimo!

Laurel wrote: "I'm a crazy OCD planner. I use the Snowflake Method ..."