Thursday, December 10, 2015

Maintaining momentum after Nanowrimo

Word count
Sat Dec 5: 544 words
Sunday, 0
Monday, Dec 7: 960 words
Tuesday, Dec 8: 730 words
Wednesday, Dec 9: 438 words*
Thursday, Dec 10: 591 words


Some Nano authors in Korea are posting their website and blogs on the Nanowrimo in Korea Facebook page and I thought I would mention them here.

Evydraws - and also writes, i presume
Simon writes, too.
Marcus Medina is nearly done and ready to publish his book.  I think it is a sequel to Yscariot: Neo-Alpha.
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I'm a fan of AC Fuller's Writer 2.0 podcast and he recently had Helen Sedgwick, an author and lawyer, on his show to talk about various legal issues.  Among other things, she offers a free set of instructions for asking music companies for permission to use lyrics in a book.  This information is specific to the US but probably broadly applicable elsewhere.
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My understanding of genre writing versus literature is that literature is more character-driven while genre writing is more plot-driven.  I'm not big on divisions myself, but that's a fair starting point to understand the differences.  If you are worried about plot, Angela Meadon has a post on planning and organizing your plot.


The story is set in a world similar to ancient north west Africa and the plot is loosely based on the fall of the Wagadu Empire. I realised, about 37,000 words in, that I was quickly loosing track of my characters and their goals were getting fuzzy. I didn’t know where the novel was going.
I wasn’t prepared to throw out the whole thing and start again, because I think I have some good work in there and I’m not prepared to give up those words. Not yet.
What did I do? I read.
Step One
I started with a revision of the Heroes Journey, the 12-step structure of mythical stories that just about every novel I can name adheres to. The official definition, from the link above, is:

[-deleted - follow the link for it]
I got out some colorful pencils and sketched it out for myself:
[-deleted image - follow the link for it]
Step Two
The next thing I did was to write out my plot according to the three act structure.
This is very important, I wanted my story to have a tight, compelling and satisfying structure. I want readers to be drawn in by the flow of the story as the characters move through the world. I needed to make sure that I had my three acts properly laid out from the beginning.
Seriously, there is good stuff at that link - at all of them, really, so click on over once you have finished reading my drivel.
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*438 words is not only less than my intended minimum but I also threw out a few hundred words of yesterday's output as well.  In addition, I had typed more in Ommwriter and accidentally hit CTRL V instead of CTRL C.  Ommwriter doesn't have an 'undo' button.  After cursing to myself, I rewrote that bit.

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