The key to winning NaNo is speed. You need to be able to sit down and bang out scene after scene. For me, that means good planning in October. I start with my characters.

I have an idea for my novel this year. It’s a story that I’ve already written about half way through, but I’m going to rework it completely. I have about ten characters already defined but I’m taking a close look at them again to be sure they serve the story I want to tell.

To start the planning process I want to define high-level personalities for my characters. I’m going to use the personality profiles in Character Creation Made Easy as a short-cut to get started. I want a base personality type for each character, major and minor. It gives me a handle on how they’ll react in their scenes. Even the walk-on characters need something to distinguish them from every other character.

For the minor characters, I’ll stop with just a base personality and a small amount of background to explain why they’re in the story and what they want (everybody wants something). For major characters I need more background and most important, motivations and goals for each one. For those, I’ll go back to Character Creation Made Easy as my starting point. Once I have an idea of the base motivation and story goals for each, I’ll switch to the Create a Character Clinic. It does a great job of leading you through a series of questions that explore different aspects of the character’s life – Work & Play, Past, Present & Future, Friends, Enemies & Lovers, Life & Death, Culture, Religion & Education, and Moral Stance. Working through some of the questions in each section gives me great detail on my major characters. I can then use the material for plot ideas also, but we’ll cover that in the next post.

So, to prepare for NaNo, start with your characters. Get a good handle on them so you know what they want and how they’ll react when you throw alligators and obstacles at them.

Have writer friends who might enjoy this post? Send it to them with my compliments! And add me as a writing buddy at nanowrimo.org so I can follow your progress in November!

It’s time for NaNo again! National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo) is a yearly event where writers strive to write 50,000 words in just 30 days. It occurs each November and 2008 is the tenth anniversary for NaNo.

NaNo was started by Chris Baty and a few of his friends. They got the crazy idea that they wanted to each write a book. They needed a way to determine that they had succeeded, so Chris pulled the shortest novel that he could find off his bookshelf and counted the words. It was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and it was 50,000 words.

The best part about NaNo is being a part of a huge writing effort. You and 25,000 other writers, all around the world, banging out novels in the space of a month. There are regional groups that sponsor “write-ins” for “WriMos” (people participating in NaNo) in local areas. They meet in coffee shops, restaurants, libraries and just write. There’s something exciting about being surrounded by other writers typing madly on laptops, Alphasmarts or writing longhand.

You can sign up to participate in NaNo at their website, www.nanowrimo.org. It’s totally free. I’ll be participating as well. Got a science fiction novel that has been bugging me to get written. You can follow my progress by adding me as a Writing Buddy. My profile is here. Or follow me on Twitter as I’ll be reporting my progress there, as well.

50,000 words in just 30 days may seem impossible. Sure, it’s short for a novel, but a lot of words to kick out in just a month. You’d certainly have to drop every other activity in your life just to have the time to write that many words. Right? Wrong. 50,000 words in 30 days is just 1,667 words a day. You can write 1,667 words each day easily, if you are properly prepared for the challenge.

From now until the first of November, I’ll have some tips for you to help you get prepared and send your word count soaring. Sign up for NaNo today!

Okay, the title is corny, I know, but I’m glad you’re here! Learn to Write Fiction is a resource for you… to help you create or refine your writing process.

These posts are a good place to start:

How To Build Your Inventory of Stories and Novels

Plotter Vs. Pantser – Which is Better?

Three Quick Plotting Methods

Writing and Eating: Daily Habits

Will Your Blog Sell Your Books?

Frontlist vs. Backlist Promotion

Mini Courses

You can sign up for free mini courses to be delivered to you via email.

The Need for Speed: 7 Ways to Complete Your Novel Fast! – Need to get your novel written fast? This course will show you how to get it done.

8 Steps to Goal Setting (and Achieving!) for Writers – Writing a book is a long and focused process. Discover steps that can help you get it done.

Free Download

As a thank you for following me, here’s a copy of my Gender Differences for Writers report that you can download. It will give you some ideas for making your male and female characters think, talk and act more like males and females.

Write Wise Newsletter

And while you’re here, sign up for my weekly newsletter. It contains

• reviews of books on writing
• case studies on bestselling authors and their writing processes
• case studies on writing systems, like First Draft in 30 Days and You Can Write a Novel Kit
• download links for free articles, tracking sheets, and books on writing

Thanks for visiting my site and feel free to drop me a note at cheryl@learntowritefiction.com.

Here’s to writing… done YOUR way!

Cheryl

I’m trying out Twitter this week. Twitter is one of the new social media sites. It’s a way to make connections with people, stay in touch.

Basically, you post short messages (140 character limit) about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, neat things on the web, questions to your friends, anything you want to. People can “follow” you, meaning they will see your “tweets” on their Twitter page. They can reply to your tweet and you’ll see it on your Twitter page. You can follow others in the same way. And so conversations take place.

Twitter could be a great tool for writers to start conversations with strangers. Strangers become friends, friends become readers. I’ll keep you posted on my results. Stop by and say hi.

Today we have another fun writing game from Paperback Writer. This one is called the Name Game.

1. Take your local phone book and find five random listings for couples and write down their first names, then select five surnames at random from different pages and assign them to your couples.
2. Pick five major (as in life-changing) events that routinely happen to couples, and assign one to each of your couples (you can do this at random or by what feels right for each couple).
3. Choose a primary conflict for each of your couples (this can be about the major event, the couple, or totally unrelated) and add that to your description.
4. Now, add another complication, but this time choose one that ties the couple’s major event to their primary conflict.
5. Using the major event, primary conflict and complication, decide on a resolution for each couple’s story.

You can use this as the basis for a short story (a particular scene from the couple’s lives) or for a novel. Even as a subplot in an existing novel. You can twist the scenarios toward a particular genre or to include specific themes as suits your fancy.

However you choose to do it, building up your inventory of stories and novels gives you more pieces to keep in play with editors and agents along with a sense of accomplishment with each piece you finish.

This quote from Isaac Asimov is good advice:

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.

Good luck with building your inventory!

If you’re up for a challenge on building up your inventory of writing, try Paperback Writer’s Dictionary: Impossible.

Take a dictionary, flip through, stop on a random page and write down the first word you see. Repeat until you have 10 words. Then you begin to play.

Level One: Create at least three novel titles using only the words on your list (a, an, the, and other simple words can be added for style.) You have five minutes to complete this level.

Level Two: Create a story premise for the titles you’ve created from your list.

Level Three: Write an opening line for the title/story premises you’ve created.

Level Four: Write the story to go with one of your opening lines, premises and titles.

Level Five: Write the stories to go with all of them, and you win Dictionary: Impossible.

Check out PBW’s post for her hilarious examples. For a fun way to create some new story ideas, try out Dictionary: Impossible.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled series to bring you this important announcement.

Holly Lisle is holding a really incredible giveaway for her birthday this month. Not just one giveaway, but ten days of giveaways amounting to over $5000 worth of prizes including

• your choice of her e-course books, from two to five of them depending on the day you win
• her Writer’s Block course
• a free membership to her How to Think Sideways course
• and various combinations of the prizes above

The giveaway runs from today through October 11. To enter, you just have to follow her on Twitter. All the details of the giveway and how to enter are listed on her blog. Check it out and get entered.

…. on second thought, don’t. Gives me a better chance of winning.