You should know what you're writing about by now if you're doing NaNoWriMo. If you don't, then I know what you're doing this weekend and may I suggest you read my posts on plotcards and character/setting deets ? Another tool that I can't live without while prewriting is the story bible. Most writers have a version of this whether it's a bunch of scrawled notes or a highly detailed folder with charts and Word documents. A story bible is a one-stop shop for all of your story related items: plot, characters, settings, notes, pictures, and whatever else applies. Creating a story bible isn't a lot of work. Mine is modeled after an article I read on XtremeLife a few years ago. (The original link is dead, but you can access an archived version here .) At heart, I'm a paper and pen girl and that's how my story bibles come out. For this NaNo, I used my very awesome Circa notebook , which made it much easier for me to move sections around. If you follo...

One week from today will be NaNoWriMo and I completed my preparation last night. My plotcards are written and organized. My characters and settings are in decent shape. By decent I mean enough has been determined to crank out a first draft. That's the key with character and setting: you have to have enough to make it work. Character Detail For years, I subscribed to the character sheet* level of detail where I had to know everything about their schooling from preschool on up, their allergies, favorite pair of earrings, etc. Filling out these multi-page sheets would take up a lot of my time. My first idea for NaNo this year got derailed by these character sheets too. The problem was that with the focus on creating all of this information about my character so they'd be more three dimensional, I was losing out on these things occurring organically through my writing. Talk about a light bulb moment. When you pare your character development to the bare minimum, your inne...

It's that time of year, not of foliage or way-too-soon Christmas decorations, but of words and words and words. That's right. It's NaNoWriMo time. If you're new on the block, this weird word stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Sounds crazy, right? To quote the Cheshire Cat, "We're all mad here." In order to successfully complete NaNoWriMo, you need an attack plan. There are many ways to achieve this, but since this is my blog real estate, I'm going to share with you what works for me. Plotcards involve index cards and ideas for scenes. If you're a pantser, this is the closest plot method to what you're used to. I first learned about how to use them through Holly Lisle ,* but have modified the process since. Going into the plotcards, you will need to know who your characters are. They don't need to be fleshed out yet, but you should know the basics: name, sex, story role (p...

What writer doesn't have some sort of ritual to get into the groove of things? I know, I know. The robot kind. Guess what? We're not talking about robots today. It's all about me answering Paper Hangover's Friday Five . I'm forgoing the obvious things here like laptop, notes, and manuscript since it's kinda hard to write or revise without these. Instead, I'll drive down to the more specific items. Part habit , part ritual , there are certain things that can never be far from me. Scented candle. There's something soothing about the flicker of a flame combined with the fragrance of whatever Yankee Candle is sitting on my table/desk/bureau*. Comfy pants. The looser, the better. It's relaxing not to be confined by buttons and zippers. Music. Whether it's to set the mood or to filter out the noise of Hubby yelling obscenities at Call of Duty, music always plays a part of my writing and revision process. If it's not playing, you know I'm...

Falling to Normal Wordle Crutch words are those sneaky things that are the backbone of your personal vernacular. They can be disguised as fillers, such as "um," or actual phrases, like "you know?" and "omigod!" They're so insidious an unobservant person wouldn't pick up on them.* This is one of the things you should be on the lookout for during the editing process. The problem with this is unless you read through your manuscript over a short, undistracted period of time, it's going to be difficult to ferret them out. Also, since they're YOUR crutch words, your brain ignores them. Since your brain likes denial, it's time to rely on technology. This is where Wordle comes into play. I touched upon this before, which you can read about here . I'm the type of person who knows when Hubby's gone looking through something in my pile of stuff. In that same pile of stuff, I remember where everything is even if I haven't tou...