Tweet I talked on Tuesday about climbing mountains — about facing and overcoming an arbitrary challenge in an arbitrary amount of time, just to become a better person. And now…welcome to NaNoWriMo Week Two. For the productive among us (or just the prepared) Week One was all about the pell-mell rush into productivity, and Week […]
Tweet I once said that I used to try, at least once a year, to go skiing or mountain climbing. I’m finding my unwritten memory as unreliable as ever, but to my best recollection, I’ve climbed four mountains. Walker and Wheeler in New Mexico (both peaks a one-day climb out of Red River), and two […]
Tweet Yesterday I talked about some of the pitfalls of chasing inspiration, and the importance of finishing projects. That might seem like a premature topic, less than a week into a month-long marathon, but Week One is the foundation or your noveling month. That’s why I was thanking Courtney yesterday for her comments on Wednesday. […]
Tweet I’m quite lucky to be surrounded by the kind of creative talent I am, and quite conniving to get all that talent working on my behalf. That’s something I think (and am told) fairly often, but in this case it’s because of yesterday’s guest post. With no prompting whatsoever, Courtney wrote a perfect introduction […]
Tweet NaNoWriMo is always a busy time of year, even without the 50,000 word commitment, and as my fourth NaNoWriMo kicks into gear I find myself halfway through the first semester of a graduate degree at the University of Oklahoma. I’m taking “Writing the Screenplay” which requires me to write a feature-length movie by mid-December, […]
Tweet We’ve been talking about long synopses and scene lists this week. Yesterday I went into some detail on what scene lists are for. Today I want to tell you how to write one. It shouldn’t be hard, but it’s definitely going to take some time and thought. So let’s get started! Meat on the […]
Tweet This week, your big NaNoWriMo prewriting assignment is to develop a long synopsis, or scene list. I’ve talked before about writing a plot synopsis (and all its various forms), and tucked in there is a brief description of a scene list: A scene list is primarily useful as a prewriting or editing tool. It […]
Tweet As my sister so kindly pointed out, I’ve fallen a bit behind on the blog posts lately. And that’s after cutting my weekly commitment by half. I still mostly blame schoolwork, but that’s really just my temporary excuse. Give me a week, and I’ll be able to blame NaNoWriMo for a full month. After […]
Tweet This week we’re talking about narrative scenes — the storytelling elements that clarify your characters and progress your plot. How Scenes Work As I said yesterday, every scene in your story must move your story forward. That can consistent of character-building, occasionally, and really only in the first act, but in most genres you […]
Tweet This month we’re reviewing all the parts and processes that go into developing a story. Our goal is to put together a complete prewriting package to do some of the heavy lifting for you when it comes time to write a novel in November. So far, if you’ve been following along, you have Characters, […]
