First Week of Nano Down- Are You Rockin' It?

If you're participating in Nanowrimo you're one week in. By now, hopefully you have a few pages under your belt and are waiting to rock some serious word count this weekend. Here are some ideas to keep in mind as your shaping this novel. Right now don't worry about going too in depth with them but this might help shape your plot as you continue to write.

1) Save the cat beat sheets. This is an awesome book for scene writers but it works for novelist too.  Below is a link to a writers website I love:

http://jamigold.com/for-writers/worksheets-for-writers/#Save the Cat

There are a lot of other options on the site but if you're just starting out I'd go with this one. Once you've finished come back and look at the other options that will help with the fine tuning of above.

2) Dave Farland's Million Dollar Outlines is another great book for adding some shape to your story. I'm not saying stress over making sure you hit every single suggestion in the first book, but if you take one suggestion a week and incorporate it into your story you'll be that far ahead.

3) The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression
I covet this book. It's my best writing friend and one of the few writing books I refuse to loan out. When you are trying to craft a scene and bring out the emotion this is a good start.

4) Resist the urge to edit. About this time I decide the first chapter needs to die. Maybe the second one. I'm a good chunk in and I decide Cynthia is now Lilly and the male main character is no longer a Damon Salvatore lookalike. This is the time for comments- From here on Cynthia is Lilly. Damon now looks like the frog prince. They are no longer in Connecticut they're in Arizona etc.  Each time I make a major change I put a note to remind me later when I come back to fix before that note. I don't fix it right away because by the end of the story they could in up in Washington. I could decide to change how they look, what they're allergic too, their feelings on food trucks several more times before I'm finished. The notes give me a place to start when I'm past Nanowrimo an into edit mode.

5) If you haven't already start a Story Bible. In a notebook somewhere or a different word doc or Scrivener start writing down the characters, the descriptions, the places, who is related to whom etc. I copy and paste this into the Bible as I'm writing. Then four chapters later when I can't remember if his creepy eyes are green or silver it's an easy find.

Hope this helps!

Any other questions/ suggestion?  Please leave a comment.