Happy October!

October is one of my favourite months because it is rainy, spooky, and also the month before NaNoWriMo, Preptober! I will be spending Preptober working on re-outlining my WIP to write technically draft 3, but since I didn’t fully finish writing draft 2, I’m going to call it draft 2.5. But anyway, in today’s post I will be talking about determining your NaNoWriMo project and getting ready for a month of prepping. I hope it’s helpful and let’s just get into it!

Quick Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Project:

• What genre is it?
• Who is telling the story?
• What are the major plot points in this story that you NEED to hit?
• Who is it for? Young adults, middle grade, adults?
• How would you describe it in one sentence?
• Why are you writing this story? For yourself, for someone else, just because?
• When are you going to try and write? Early mornings, late at night?
• What are 3 things that you do to motivate yourself to write? Go for a walk, read a book, watch some AuthorTube?
• What are you going to use to write this story? A notebook and pen, your laptop, a typewriter?

Step 1: Meet Your Characters

Who are they? What do they do? Who are their friends, their enemies, their lovers, their family? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their fears? Their passions? What do they hate? If they could change one thing about themselves, what would that be? There are so many questions to ask them and on Tomi Adeyemi’s website (author of Children of Blood and Bone), she has a great selection of character sheets for you to print off so click HERE for them!

Step 2: Create Your World

Whether you are creating a magical world or writing a story in our world, you still need to build it. If you are creating a brand new one, draw maps, write up the world’s history like its battles, leaders, etc. Know who the leader of it is and how the political system works and such. If you are using our world, how do your characters and plot fit into it? Where does it take place? What year? What month? Here is a link to someone’s blog post I found for some more ideas of what to consider in your world if you need some more ideas!

Step 3: Build Your Plot

Now that you have your characters and world, build your plot around them. How do they interact with the plot? What sort of plot would make sense with these characters and world? I would recommend having like 9 main plot points that you need to hit throughout your story, and then connect them with the strings (subplots) to keep your story at a good pace and still interesting! Again, Tomi Adeyemi has some amazing posts regarding plot so for more ideas and insight, click HERE. Just scroll down until you see the PLOT related posts but as I was linking this, I realized that she also has a FREE plot course! That is amazing so if you are interested, click HERE.

Step 4: Keep Organized

You have this information so make sure you keep it all organized! Separate characters from world building from the plot but keep it in a place where you can easily access it whenever you need. I recommend a physical notebook over keeping things on your laptop, but whatever is easier and works best for you, do that! If you prefer staying organized on your computer, I do have some recommendations that I’ve used and liked in the past: Scrivener, Evernote, Word, Google Docs.

Step 5: Create a (Loose) Schedule

One thing I stand by is to try and stick to a schedule during the first week of NaNoWriMo. If it doesn’t work out, then whatever, just write when you can, but if it does stick then you will get so much more done! You will get in the habit of writing at certain times and when that time comes, you will actually feel like writing. Or at least feel like you should be writing. For example, recently I have been getting up a little earlier on weekdays and writing a bit. Sometimes only for 30 mins but sometimes even more than that. It allows me to start my day off being productive and makes sure I get some words in each day. I also write in the later afternoon after I get home from school and relaxed a bit, but before dinner time. These are the times that have recently been working for me but sometimes change. And that’s okay! I recommend spending October trying to figure out a potential writing schedule because if it works, NaNoWriMo will be sooo much easier.

More Fun Things to Get You Ready for NaNoWriMo:

Videos: Preptober|Planning Your Novel for NaNoWriMo – Kristen Martin

NaNoWriMo Prep|Survival Kit – Natalia Leigh

Blog Posts: NaNoWriMo Prep #1, #2, #3, #4 – by ME!

That is all I have for this week’s Preptober post and I hope you enjoyed and found it helpful! Don’t forget to check out my last blog post as well as my social media accounts all linked below. Thanks 🙂

Last Blog Post: Reading + Writing Update

 

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