One day until National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starts again. There are some fabulous writers around the web getting ready to start another fantastic month of noveling frenzy. In honor of the novel masterpieces soon to be under way, here are a few more links of NaNo tools and resources for you.

Low-tech tracking spreadsheet in three different formats from Simon Haynes along with some tips for NaNo and a One-Day Catchup Form to use if you fall behind.

If you need novel writing software, there’s an extended trial on Scrivener and a 50% discount on buying the software for all 2009 NaNo winners.

Jennifer Blanchard of Procrastinating Writers has a review on an ebook from Larry Brooks on story structure. She says it’s a must-read before NaNo starts. Cost is only $10 right now.

Here’s a Squidoo lens with lots of info and links to NaNo resources.

Lynn Viehl has Ten Things for NaNoWriMo’ers – a handy list of links, including NaNo images for your website.

Here’s a NaNoWriMo word meter for your website.

MacWorld has put together a list of novel-writing tools for the Mac.

Are you NaNo’ing this year? Add me as a Writing Buddy.

It’s nearly November and time for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is the month where thousands of people tackle the challenge of writing 50,000 words in just 30 days.

To get you started, check out these posts on getting prepared for NaNo from last year:

Creating your characters

Laying out your initial plot

Getting into the proper mindset for NaNo

Writing tips to help you reach 50,000 words

Training yourself to write FAST

How to have fun while doing NaNo

Some tools to use for NaNo

Download a free copy of the NaNoWriMo Survival Guide from Lazette Gifford

Read a review of No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty (founder of NaNo)

To track your progress for NaNo, here’s an updated copy of the tracking spreadsheet originally created by Eric Benson. This is in Open Office format, but you should be able to open it in other spreadsheet programs, as well.

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 I want to get through the first draft. You can follow my progress by adding me as a Writing Buddy. Or follow me on Twitter as I’ll be reporting my progress there, as well.

Time once again for our round up of online writing classes and workshops happening in November. If you’re not participating in NaNoWriMo, sign up for one of these low-cost classes and learn something about writing this month.

Surviving Trauma – Learn the characteristics of resiliency and the secrets of survival from numerous case studies of individuals who have survived violent trauma including concentration camps in Germany, genocide in Rwanda, violent crime, spinal injury, childhood abuse, etc.

Ignite Your Fiction – Learn how to examine and write succinct, vivid examples of Exposition, Description, Narration/Summary, and Action-Dialogue. The concept of pacing in character and plot will be stressed as well as development of the writer’s own “voice.”

Mastering Point of View – How truly understanding and mastering point of view can fix an ailing manuscript, and turn a decent but lackluster novel into a page-turner.

Scottish Castles of the 12th and 13th Centuries – Learn about the castles, king and court, the nobility, and calendar feasts and pastimes.

The “W” Plot…or The Other White Meat for Plotters – Learn how to use the “W” plotting technique tol uncover the skeleton of your own novel. Whatever your genre, not only will you have the tools you need to finish plotting your story using the “W”, you’ll know how to use it to write the synopsis we all love to hate…all without writing one word of the novel.

Breaking Procedural Rules – Learn the facts about legal procedures and how they can go awry, including how to stir in entrapment, illegal searches, tainted evidence, tampered juries, and badgered witnesses.

Inner Drives: Create Characters Using the Centers of Motivation (Chakras) – Each physical-psychological-philosophical Chakra has unique hopes, fears, strengths, weakness, actions, speech styles, and more that you can use to define and explore your characters.

Fiction to Freelance Writing – Discover how writing articles can boost their writing career regardless of their publishing status. Get insider tips on how to research a publication’s slant, learn the secrets of twisting a topic to generate great article ideas, where to find the perfect markets for those ideas and the easy (and painless, honest!) way to create the perfect query letter.

Day in the Life: Archaeologists – Learn about the difference between contract work, academia, and wwashbuckling; the basic steps in what to do if you want to dig something; the importance of permission and ethics (no Indiana Jones-style looting); how to interpret archaeological sites from the ground up.

Heightening Conflict Through the Fatal Flaw & Shadow – Learn how the “triangle” technique can unveil your character’s suppressed or shadow traits, which will emerge as the character struggles to overcome a deeply hidden flaw.

Online Critique Group – Receive feedback on six crucial components (concept, character development, plot, narrative, dialogue and research) of whatever you’re currently writing with the goal of helping you continue the development/rewrite process independently.

NaNo’s approaching rapidly and I’ve got some fun links for you.

The Writertopia Progress Meter. There are two available; get the second one with the writer. You can use it to set your “mood” to illustrate how your writing is going.

If you like to do timed writings, try the Online-Stopwatch. You can do a count down or a count up. For extreme fun, try the Bomb Countdown.

Need some plot ideas for your novel? Try the 36 (plus one) Dramatic Situations for some twisty ideas.

Draw a Basic Mind Map of Your Character with guidance form Deborah Woehr.

How about a Timeline Generator for your fantasy or science fiction novel?

If you need details on a religion, try the God Checker featuring over 2,850 deities.

If you need a break from writing, there’s nothing better than fun with Sticky Notes?

I’ve been busy at the Muse Online Writer’s Conference this week, giving a presentation on Using Social Media to Find and Attract Readers. Excellent conference with many great workshops and fabulous writer attendees. You should definitely sign up next year to attend.

Some great links from around the web:

Seven Questions from Jenny Crusie – Questions you can use when critiquing someone’s work or when evaluating your own.

What it Takes to Become a Master Writer by Mary DeMuth by way of Michael Hyatt’s blog – Do you have 10,000 hours in you?

Libraries, Authors, & Promotion: An Interview with RWA Librarian of the Year Deborah Schneider from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – If you’re ready to think about promotion, check out this article on free promo at your local libraries.

Seven Things I’ve Learned From Querying by Johanna Harness – Good advice on the mindset and process of querying.

By Holly Lisle

If I ask you to tell me about your character, and you tell me his name is John and he’s 27, tall, blond, and muscular…I’m outta your book. Gone. You have told me NOTHING that MATTERS. Who is this person you want me to pay my money to meet? He’s not going to be a tall, blond balloon if I’m going to buy him.

And you’re not going to sell that big young nothing to a publisher, either. You’re selling characters. If we’re going to call them characters, they have to have some.

Character, that is.

You’ll pitch your book with what I call The Sentence. You have less than thirty words to convey the highlights of your story idea so anyone can follow and understand it. In that one sentence, you will describe the main situation of the book, your protagonist, your antagonist, and why I should care about what you’re writing—the thing that makes your story matter. Call it your twist.

Your protagonist—your main character—is critical to The Sentence. You have about three words in The Sentence to nail him. No name, no physical description—just…character. You get to character through questions like:

• Who are the people who shaped his life? (His friends, his enemies, his lovers, his family.)
• What drives him? (Examine his desires, needs, fears, and struggles.)
• What is his occupation? (Examine his job, his hobbies, his goals and plans.)

Here’s what you’re trying to get. Start with Blond John the Empty Skin Suit. Is he a husband, father, or brother? A CEO, a carpenter, a sailor? What one noun describing him is MOST important to your story? Use that. And then… what’s he like? Driven, obsessive, pursued by villains, haunted by his past? Blond nothing becomes pursued father, haunted carpenter, obsessed brother…and suddenly we care. We want to know how he’s haunted, what’s pursuing him, why he’s obsessed. When you can get us to care, you have us where you want us.

So keep going. You bring your antagonist to life using the same set of questions. Every story has an antagonist, though not every story has a villain. The antagonist wants things that stand in the way of what the protagonist—the hero—wants or needs. Whether you have a true villain who wants to destroy the hero or a sympathetic antagonist caught on the opposite side of an impossible situation is up to you. But what stands between them has to matter. It has to be important. And it can’t be just one big misunderstanding—because if you pull that garbage on us, we’ll never pick up another book by you.

You’ll build your characters in layers, one question at a time. Eventually you’ll ask yourself “What’s this character’s name? What does he look like?” But before then, you’ll have learned who his is, and why he is that person—which is the part of any of us that actually matters. When you know the answers to those two questions, and when your answers matter, you’ll have a character worth writing.

You can do this.

——————

For more information on how to bring your characters to life by focusing on their specific extraordinary qualities, sign up for How to Think Sideways, a 6-month course on writing that will stimulate your Muse and guide you through getting your Muse to perform on demand.

This course, delivered in weekly lessons, includes:

• Monthly video that covers the month’s main topic
• Weekly lessons with assignments
• Weekly technique demonstrations
• Monthly checklist of all steps to take
• A monthly Q&A made up of questions taken from the course forums
• Private workgroups (optional)
• Class discussion forum to interact with other students

I’ve taken the How to Think Sideways course myself and loved it. It gave me insights into my plot and characters that I had never expected. It helped me take my writing to the next level. It can do the same for you.

But… (you knew there was a catch, right?) it’s only available for a very limited time. It’s closing to new students on Friday, October 9th. In the future, the course will only be made available twice a year, the next one being sometime in 2010. To enroll now, go to How to Think Sideways.

Invest in yourself and your writing this year.