Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo 2012. Show all posts

Friday, November 30

NaNoWriMo Ends. Editing Begins!

NaNoWriMo Ends. Editing Begins!

If you participated in NaNoWriMo 2012 you're a winner! It's the end of the month and you survived with your sanity (more-or-less) intact.

Whatever your word count, this should be a day of celebration. You wrote more than you normally do, you stretched yourself as a writer, and are heading into December with what Jim Butcher called writing momentum. Because I think his advice is fabulous I'm going to include it here even though I posted about it only a few days ago.
Write every day.

Even if you only write a little bit, even if you only write a sentence or a word, write. Because, even if you've just written a word, you're one word closer to the end of the book than you were at the beginning of the day, and that's progress.

Writing is about momentum, so get that momentum, set your time aside every day and stay honest.  (Jim Butcher's Advice For New Writers: Write Every Day)

What The Future Holds: Editing


For those of you who did finish and wrote 50,000 words over the course of November, you rock! But it's not over. You have a first draft. Great! Now put it in a drawer and back away slowwwly.


1. Take A Break


Resist the urge to read your manuscript over. Let it rest. Stephen King usually gives it about six weeks, but do what feels right for you. I think that having at least a week off would be an excellent idea.

Part of the reason for giving yourself a break is so that you'll be able to come back and, to a certain extent, read your story with fresh eyes. Passages you thought blazed with unsurpassed brilliance and creativity will seem less brilliant (after all, you were sleep deprived and over-caffeinated) but parts that you thought hadn't turned out as well as you wanted may strike you as pretty darn good.


2. Read Your Manuscript Through But DO NOT EDIT IT


When you come back to your manuscript read it through once, from beginning to end, but DO NOT EDIT IT.

Because you've gotten some distance from the story you will have forgotten some of its twists and turns. Given that, it would be BAD to make major alterations before you've loaded the story back into your noggin.

I know it's agonizingly hard to read your work without editing it. Or perhaps that's just me. It's like torture. But your restraint will pay off.

By all means, take lots of notes about what you'd like to change, but put them in a different file, or you could even use a paper notebook. I often enjoy the act of writing on a physical page when I'm taking notes.


3. Unleash Your Inner Editor


During NaNoWriMo I've been saying to people, "Take your inner editor, tie her up, and lock her in a closet." Now it's time to let her out (and hope she's not too grumpy). Now you want to think about how other people would read your story.

Here's a rule of thumb: 

Above all else, you want your story to be clear. Remove anything that doesn't serve to push your story forward.

For each element of your story look at it and ask yourself, "Does this need to be here? Would the story be the same without it?" If its absence would leave the story unchanged, be ruthless and cut.

Protagonist's goals: 

Is it clear what your protagonist wants? What their external goal is? For instance, winning the hand of the princess, finding the golden bird, bringing back the lost ark, and so on.

How about your protagonist's inner goal? How do they need to change in order to get what they truly want? For instance, Shrek was lonely, isolated. He wanted friends, but in order to get them he had to change and let people in.

Subplots:

How many subplots do you have? If you want to write an 80,000 word story and this is your first book you could go easy on yourself and have only one, or perhaps two. If you're writing a 40,000 word novella (which I think would be an excellent thing to do!) you wouldn't need any sub-plots. Again, this advice is for new writers, if this isn't your first book you know best what you're comfortable with.

Characters:

If a character doesn't do anything to advance the plot get rid of him. Or perhaps you could combine him/her with another character.

Backstory:

You only want to include what is relevant to the other characters in the novel at the time it's given. Robert Sawyer gave a beautiful example of this. (Robert J. Sawyer: Showing Not Telling)

Best of luck as you continue to work on your novel! Do you have any advice you'd like to pass on?

Here are a few articles about editing:

- Creating Memorable Supporting Characters
- Editing: Make Sure Your Story's Bones Are Strong
- Robert J. Sawyer: Showing Not Telling
- 11 Steps To Edit Your Manuscript. Edit Ruthlessly & Kill Your Darlings
- Check Your Writing For Adverbs And Other Problem Words: MS Word Macros
- How To Find The Right Freelance Editor For You
- Want Help With Editing? Try Free Editing Programs

Photo credit: "The BIG Guy" by VinothChandar under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Saturday, November 24

Using Pinterest To Help Build Your Fictional Worlds

Using Pinterest To Help Build Your Fictional Worlds

I love Pinterest. I mean, who wouldn't? If only it wasn't a lethal time-sink! I love looking at beautiful pictures and chatting with friends. Since Pinterest combines both it's like visiting a virtual art gallery with dozens of your best buds and getting to curate your own collection.

I figured out a LONG time ago that I needed to limit my time on Pinterest if I wanted to get anything done.

That's why I was surprised when I came across Daniel's article, Using Pinterest For Your Novel. It never occurred to me that The Great Timesink could be harnessed for good.

Who knew?


Pinterest Right-Click


Before I say anything more about using Pinterest to help organize your novel I'd like to talk about how to get a plug-in for your browser that will allow you to right-click on any picture you find on the web and pin it to one of your boards.

I use Firefox so that's the browser I talk about, but I'd be surprised if similar plug-ins don't exist for your favorite browser.

Pinterest Right-Click is the name of an add-on you can get that will help you collect images from the web and pin them to one of your boards. After you install the add-on all you have to do is right-click on an image. You'll be asked which board you'd like to pin it to and that's it! Quick and convenient.


Organize Your Research With Pinterest


Pinterest provides and great way to visually organize your research for a novel.  For instance, you could have one board for pictures of locations, one board for pictures of casting choices for your characters and one board dedicated to the music that not only inspired you as you write your novel but which your characters like to listen to.

But that's just the beginning! You could have boards for what their homes look like, their wardrobes, landscape features such as gardens, where they like to go on vacation, what their families look like, what they dream about, and so on.

Here's my Pinterest board for my NaNoWriMo novel: NaNoWriMo 2012.

Locations


When I draft a story I tend to think visually. What a great idea to use a Pinterest board to hold miscellaneous images you come across on the web, images that remind you of various locations, or possible locations, in your novel.

In my NaNoWriMo novel one of my characters, a mage, lives in an ice fortress (no, he's not superman!) and I have an image in my mind of what it looks like. I just Googled "ice fortress", found lots of great pictures that ... while none of them was  exactly like the image I have in my mind, they're fairly close and evocative in their own way.

Using Pinterest Right-Click I easily created a new board "NaNoWriMo 2012" and pinned those photos to my board.

Your Characters - What They Look Like


Although it changes, in the beginning I have certain ideas about what my characters look like. Though perhaps it's only partial. Perhaps I'll know that the antagonist has long thick black flowing hair that gleams in sunlight. It's fun to use Google images to help fill out the picture.

I just went through and pinned a few images of how my characters could look and found out something valuable. Apart from Robyn, my protagonist, I'm not sure how the other characters look, especially her friend and side-kick Jane. Good to know! That's something I'll have to work on in the second draft.

Music - What Would Your Characters Listen to?


Since Pinterest is a visual medium the best we can do is pin pictures of albums, concerts, songs, magicians, and so on. Though it would be be great if we could pin the actual songs!

Before this moment this isn't something I've thought about for my characters, what kind of music they'd like. It's good to think about, though. This helps bring out other aspects of their personality. At the moment all I know is that Robyn likes classical music. That might change, though, as I get to know her better.


I'm finding there are a multitude of creative ways to use Pinterest. If you have one you'd like to share, please do! :)

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NaNoWriMo Update: Hurray! 45,025 words. Only one caffeinated writing jag away from the end. Not that I think that's going to happen, though it would be nice to finish tomorrow! Still, I think I'll continue to take it slow and steady so, if I keep my current pace, I'll be finished Monday. Which works out perfectly, since I wanted to be done before Jim Butcher's Cold Days comes out on the 27th.

I hope I didn't just jinx myself! lol

Other articles you might like:

- How To Become More Creative: Nurturing Your Muse
- For NaNoWriMo: 10 HarperCollins Books On Writing For $1.99 Each
- Robert J. Sawyer: Showing Not Telling

Photo credit: "Brown Bear having fun, rolling in the grass on his back with paws up" by Beverly & Pack under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.