#NaNoWriMo Progress: Week 2

We all struggle when it comes to writing, right? I think we hear and cry out more “Woe is me” during NaNo than any other time. As though the words that seek to escape the prison of our mind have suddenly realised it’s better inside their familiar cell.

SO imagine my surprise when 22,309 words later I’m still working through the first arc of my NaNo novel and there’s still more coming. As though my Word document has become an anthill and the little critters are coming home to roost. (Do ants roost?)

The Actual Struggle

I think I’ve said this before in my previous NaNo progress post that my struggle is not with the words themselves but the story. At first it was how to start, then for a while it was where it was all going. Now its pulling back from bearing the emotions my characters experience as they guide me through their journey. Becoming a conduit for their tales of woe.

It’s one of the greatest feelings as a writer (and reader) when these fictional people created for the sake of entertainment become more than just characters in a book. They manifest into living souls tugging at the heart and mind and making you scream, “Don’t go in there! It’s a trap.” then watching them fall into the trap to leave you hoping with all your might that they escape.

However as the author I not only set up the trap, but drive circumstances forcing my characters towards that trap, make them fall in and then deciding whether or not the escape. Sometimes these characters take the reigns and tug them away from me long enough to make their own choices before I can regain control. As though they were alive.

It also scares me how much control they have once I’m digging into the writing and the real world disappears around me. As though I’ve plugged into a virtual reality headset that brings my story to life and I live through it, watching it unfold while also guiding where, how, who, and why everything is happening.

Summon the Great Editor

I would but I’m not allowed to during NaNoWriMo. You know that right? Also, I have an aversion to editing but as I’ve been writing, I discovered so many things about the style I want to use. I think the first part of my novel is all first person, then I switched to normal third person, and now, as my good friend Ole would say (shout out to you dude) about my current writing style, “That’s some wedding floral arrangement level of floweriness”.

So now I want to go back and rewrite everything with that same style but… perhaps in December. Anyway, I have to get back to writing now.

Onward to 50K and more.

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#NaNoWriMo Progress: Week 1

This is going to be a short one because I have to get back to all the writing. No tips. No advice. No words of encouragement beyond “Do the best that you can, and more.”

This is really more about how important the Prep I did before NaNo has helped me sit down and churn out 2K words in a two hours. Not an impressive Word Per Minute (it’s 16wpm) but in the end I was able to flow. My characters had been defined. The world had been built. The overall arc considered. It was just a matter of waiting for NaNo to come around so I can put words down and start working on the story.

The Difficulty of Starting

I struggled to start. I mean really struggled. Not in terms of word count, but in terms of how I wanted the story to go. I have these two main characters, the Innocent-yet-Tainted character and the Tainted-Seeking-Innocence character. Either one had a really good premise and backstory but I couldn’t decide which one to go with. So I did both. Hated both. Then I started a third draft right in the middle of each of their personal conflicts, guiding the story forward from each of their perspectives.

As it stands, between those three drafts I am on (13,289 ) words, though I don’t want to include the first two drafts into the word count. I feel like its cheating.

The Novel in Your Head

Once I started writing I could feel my characters come alive in my head. Their thoughts becoming my own, their emotions thrumming through me. The decisions they were making also mine to make. There are two experiences I want to share you with you:

The Diverging Path

As I was writing a particular scene, my character was on the way to doing something that would change their current situation. Only that change had two diverging paths and each leading to a different end for the scene. I knew this as I was writing, fingers too slow to catch up to the mind, the mind conjuring up new futures where the character could go and I had to choose one as I was writing. The words I was typing at that moment to alter the destiny of my character.

I have never felt so torn about the future of a fictional character. Seeing these two timelines stretching outwards and me choosing which one I think is best. Oh the thrill of writing.

 

The Movie Feeling

During my 2k writing sprint, I was writing a particularly emotional scene where the character makes quite an important decision. I was there with them through every moment, living vicariously through each word my fingers were typing to reflect this character I had become. And it was when I wrote the final scene and took my break that I realised I was emotionally invested into this character and wanted to know more. Like I had paused a scene in a movie and could press play to continue watching.

It’s a feeling I haven’t felt in my writing for a long while, and its both disturbing and exciting.

Onward to week #2

As well as this story is going, I feel like its not moving at the pace I expected it to. There are too many transitional scenes which attribute to character growth, and world building etc. And I know not every scene is going to be a horror-fest. I just have to plug away, knowing that after NaNo I’ll be free to edit, change, and chop as I see fit. Until then, I continue.

Genre Writing: Horror – World Building

Oh man I really enjoyed doing this Genre Writing series. But alas it has come to an end as I turn my focus towards NaNoWriMo. Will it return? I think I said it would in a previous blog post which means technically I am held accountable by a past me with too much optimism in his head. Nonetheless, hopefully you’ll be staying with me on the blog right? Why? Well… I still have great content to share with you as we embark on this writing/reading/blogging journey.

I have written so much content on world building on this blog. Don’t believe me? Just scroll through: WORLD BUILDING POSTS!. Oh and this doesn’t even include the four-part Guest Post I did with Rachel Poli. So what I am doing different this time? Well for starters my focus will be world building for horror and the second is that it’s world building for my NaNo novel.

So let’s dive in. *Cue creepy Halloween music

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Fundamentals of Horror

If you’ve been following along with my Genre Writing: Horror series then you’ll know we’ve covered quite a lot of things. We’ve spoken about the fundamentals of horror, namely:

Atmosphere:  The mood and setting of the story, intended to guide the reader’s mind towards understanding that bad things are going to happen.

Fear Factor: The reason the story is a horror. Anything from spiders and clowns, to Lovecraftian entities, and demons, to serial killers.

Character Flaws: No one acts rationally when placed into an irrational situation. You’ve probably done it too, checked the wardrobe to make sure there’s no monster in there. Luckily there wasn’t. Not in horror. There’s a monster in there.

The Twist: Not all horrors have a twist, but a lot do. The creature the hero defeated is not dead and in the last scene the decapitated head winks.

Putting the Fear into the Story

I also spoke about creating the sense of fear into the reader and how I go about doing that.

Role of the Author: As the author, you must understand that we won’t all have the same fears. What you must do is put that fear into the reader. Look at Stephen King’s early novels, Cujo, Christine, Pet Semetary, IT, The Mist etc. He took mundane things and made us, the readers, fear them.

Realism/Logic: A lot of people get put off by some horror books because the scenes are beyond believable. Using realism and logic to craft a believable horror puts readers into a position where they think “This could happen.” Once that thought enters their mind, you’ve done your job.

Pain vs Paranoia – Emotional vs Physical: Invest into your characters. They are the driving force of horror. Your reader must suddenly find themselves in the shoes of the characters, their paranoia and fear growing with each turning page.

Defining Your Writing Style

I did a comprehensive look at writing styles, talking word choice, voice, sentence structure, and writing style (expository/descriptive/narrative). This, combined with my own ideas/emotions defined the kind of horror I would write. While horror is a general term, there are different variations of it. From Gothic horror to contemporary to Weird fiction to your serial killer stories.

To Gore or not to Gore: Horror is not defined by blood splatter, although it is a nice to have. Figure out if the story you’re writing needs to be gory to be a good horror or if you can get away with less.

Psychological Horror: Sometimes humans are monsters. Psychological horror shows us the depth of human depravity. We are exposed to our vulnerabilities in light of mental and emotional fears revealing the darker side of the human psyche.

Through the Eyes of One: A worldview is how someone sees the world. Whether its through rose-tinted glasses or through filth stained glasses. Telling from the killer’s eyes will mean your writing reflects his thoughts. He won’t mind kicking a puppy. As opposed to telling the story through the eyes of a child with an innocent mindset. Varying perspectives can give the story a new edge that pushes it from mediocre to brilliant.

The Hero vs the Monster

This is usually the defining factor of your horror which is why I left it for last. The question is, what kind of monster do you want to write about? The haunted house? The possessed child? The monster under the bed? The supernatural? Or human monsters. Or the Old Ones?

Character/Monster Building: There’s a whole post on this so read it when you get a chance. Important things to note are individuality, motivation, strengths, weaknesses and conflict to name a few. Make them multi-dimensional in their interests, in their goals, in their emotions, and in their thinking. Give them a past that explains who and why they are who they are.

Cliches Everywhere: I’ve spoken about this before, that cliches aren’t necessarily bad. It’s about how you write them. There are plenty of novels about possessions, and haunted houses, and vampires and it seems every week a new Cthulu novella is announced. At the same time we are all individuals with differing upbringing, inspirations, etc and can be unique even in our cliches. Just don’t copy your favourite author. You’re not them.

 

World Building for Horror

If you were confused about how everything I wrote fits into world building, well let me tell you. That was the world building.

The fundamentals defined what kind of world your story will be in, mostly displayed by the atmosphere you’re going for. So in your mind you have a place – a location – where everything will take place. That’s the first part of your world.

Fear introduced a monster into your environment. They skulk about in this created world. They possibly have a place they call their own or somewhere where they came from. Everything that makes the monster defines its “home” as a spider has a web.  You’ve added another location to your world.

Writing style and character/monster building, gives you the worldview of the story and its characters. Are we seeing it from the perspective of a regular human? Adult or child? Killer? Family man? Student? These will define the environments they go to which gives you more locations such as home, office, school, local park etc. It also defines how they see things around them. A cemetery may be scary for a child, but the perfect location to hide dead bodies for a killer.

My NaNo Novel:
Some Horror Thing (Working title)

Tomorrow I begin to write my novel. I have my characters, I have an idea of a story, and I have an idea of where its all going to take place. It will be set in our current world and time, with “flashes” to the past as we (yes both of us) watch how the monster became the monster. The whole Genre Writing segment has been world building.

Now I’m ready

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*Gifs from Silent Hill because it’s just beautiful!

Have these tips helped you? Are you ready for NaNo?

 

Genre Writing: Horror – Crafting the Villain

Oh yes my favourite part of writing horror. The villain. The antagonist. The creature of the dark who stalks their prey with nothing more than malice and a sick, twisted mind. *cue scary music

Okay no that’s not at all what I will be doing. Instead, think of a villain you hate and ask yourself why your hate them. Is it because of what they do? Who they are?

Do you understand why they do what they do?

If you take a look at a lot of villains, from the Joker to the Wicked Witch of the West to Megatron, there is more to their villainy than just pure evil. Each one has some sort of goal, and the only real difference between them and the hero, is that they don’t mind doing the dirty work to achieve that goal. (except you Captain Jack Sparrow – damn pirates). Like an athlete who is willing to trip their competitor (or break their ankle) beforehand in order to win the race.

Also, it’s important to humanize the villain. It makes them relatable and likable, which means you’ll hate/love them more for it. So, how do we do that?

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Creating the Perfect Villain

Last week’s post “Genre Writing: Crafting a Character” can be applied to creating the perfect villain. Individuality, motivation, conflict, character flaws and strengths. You must know who they are before they became a villain. Who they are during their villainy, and who they become afterwards.

Multidimensional Villains

No one likes a boring character, let alone a boring villain. So how do you make them interesting? Well, you make them complicated. Consider your own personality, life, character traits, faults and successes. Are they all simple? I hardly think so.

• Mentally-Multidimensional

Here you consider the intellect of your villain. Are they simple-minded with focus on a single goal and nothing else. Or are they highly intelligent and able to manipulate, and figure out ways to reach their goals. Nothing bores me more than a villain who doesn’t seem to have thought things through and keeps getting foiled (unless its for comedic effect, though even that has limits).

At the same time, when you compare a zombie to a vampire, you can see how both these undead entities vary in intelligence and yet both those attributes are scary in their own way.

• Emotionally-Multidimensional

Is your villain angry all the time? Why? Can someone be perpetually angry? Or sad. Or bitter. Or paranoid. Etc. You should know how your villain will react when they receive they favourite thing or when they lose it. You should know if your villain could fall in love and what would happen if they were abandoned by the love of their life.

Remember, they do not have villainous thoughts 24/7 after all, even Professor Moriarty spent time reading and drinking tea.

• Chronologically-Multidimensional

Has your villain been the same as a child or did they grow up to become the Great-Big-Bad? Some, like Dexter (the serial killer cos the other Dexter is still a child sooooo) were born that way, and we see him killing neighbourhood animals as a child. Compared to Anakin Skywalker who was good and his fears drove him to the dark side, leading to him becoming Darth Vader (spoiler?). Was it the old battle of “Nature vs Nurture”? Was it a natural path for them to take? What has happened from their formative years to drive them into villainy?

 

 My Antagonist

As it stands, my antagonist is just a concept. A creature who feeds on the regrets and past failings of your every day Jane/John Doe. I only realised later how close this creature is to a Dementor except Dementors can’t time travel. And they are blind. And they suck the soul out. And float about in dark cloaks. It’s the whole

“they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them.”

That part. That’s very similar to my antagonist.

Of course there is a slight twist to the tale and to tell you what that twist is, is to ruin the coming novel so I’ll leave it there. Nonetheless it will incorporate the multidimensional aspects of character building, which means this won’t be no regular demon of the night.  It will be something worse. Something… terrifying.

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How’s your’s NaNo prep going? Did you find my advice useful? Do you have a villain in your story? What are they like in one sentence?

Thanks for dropping by!

Genre Writing: Horror – Crafting a Character

In my writing, I’ve noticed that I spend a lot of time building worlds and using descriptive language to tell the story. The one thing that I have always lacked, and hope to improve, is my characters. I know I reference Stephen King a lot. Like a lot, but one thing I keep mentioning about his work is how well he does his characters. Long after I’ve read the book, I can still recall his characters.

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Character Building

So how do you build the perfect character? That’s quite difficult to say, although there are fundamentals we can pick out. You can use these basics for any story, whether it’s horror or Sci-Fi, or Fantasy.

• Individuality

A friend of mine (Nicky from Chasing Dreams Publishing) has some great ideas on how to craft characters readers will enjoy. The one thing I extracted from her post is making characters unique. This may seem like a given, and in your mind you may see them as individuals. It’s how you bring them across that is important. Things like how they speak (voice/tone), how they carry themselves (body language), and how they act.

• Motivation/Conflict

Everyone around you wants something. A personal goal that keeps them ticking. It doesn’t have to be anything epic (find the special item of immeasurable power) or world domination. These goals and motivations define what is important to your characters and they will act accordingly. Then have something that conflicts with their goal whether it’s a person or a personal trait.

• Character Flaws

Usually this tags along with some sort of cliche. The red-haired is feisty. The ex-cop is a drunk. The religious lady is a crazy zealot. Etc. Most flaws are a little less eccentric, but can be written to be the character’s downfall or lead to something believable yet out of character. For instance, in Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, the one character stopped picked up chewing on toothpicks to get over a bad habit. This later leads to a very fatal end when he’s in a strenuous situation and just needs his toothpick. NEEDS it.

My Protagonist

The innocent Jane/John Doe whose life is thrown into disarray after discovering an evil entity in their home/child/parent/school, feels over done. I’ve watched a lot of horror movie trailers (and movies) as well as read a couple of horror book blurbs with this sort of premise. While I don’t always shun cliches, this idea is boring for me.

To change it up, my protagonist won’t be an innocent, ordinary Jane/John Doe. Instead I have:

One-Who-Must-Overcome

Profile: Must appear innocent to characters in book yet reader must get a sense of a deeper darkness. A troubled past they have embraced. An uncertain future they wish to clarify and brighten. Broken and hopeful.

Conflict: What defines them is exactly what they want to change. A journey of self-discovery, with very difficult choices that contradict their goal even though it’s supposed to help.

Strengths and Flaws: Carefree attitude allows them to shrug off lots of things, while nursing a crippling fear of the “darkness” within them that forces them to shun people. Troubled past has grown and matured them mentally and emotionally to live an almost normal life, while a small part is mischievous and playful to reconnect to that lost past they wish to regain which causes issues.

Jake Chambers from Stephen King’s the Dark Tower is an interesting character, especially since he is quite young. Also, he fits this description well. Too well…

Look Around You

Last point. Be observant of the people around you. There are living, breathing characters right in your vicinity and could make wonderful additions and mixes to your story.

Genre Writing: Horror – Crafting a Story

Coming up with a story can have varying origin facets. From a single word heard during a conversation, to a writing prompt or even a random thought sparked by the world around you. Inspiration comes in many forms after all. In this particular case, for my unnamed NaNoWriMo horror novel, inspiration has been hard to come by. And trust me, I’ve been trying everything.

So what does one do when inspiration doesn’t come knocking? Easy. You go knocking on inspirations door.

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From Nothing to Something

When I was creating my NaNo novel in the dashboard, there were a few things to fill out. One of these was the synopsis. I had no idea what to write in there, so I put down the most basic premise of a horror:

There was a person and a creature and lots of people died horrible gruesome deaths.

Pretty simple right. I wasn’t even thinking too much about it when I wrote it down. However, after looking at it for some time, I picked up four fundamental elements in it:

1. The “person” is the main protagonist.
2. The “creature” is the antagonist
3. The “lots of people died” is the progression of the story
4. The “horrible gruesome deaths.” completes the horror aspect.

And you know what, most horror films follow this thread. They change the “person” (mother/father/caretaker/camp counselor/detective) but they are all effectively the same. They change the “creature” (evil entity/ghost/serial killer/haunted house) but they all play the same role. Lastly, this changes how “lots of people died” and what “horrible gruesome deaths” look like, but they still happen.

Inspiration

There are various ways that one can tackle the great plague known as “Lack of Inspiration” A.K.A Writer’s Block. When it comes to crafting a story, your idea’s building blocks will either make or break your story, and moving from nothing to something while “blocked” makes it harder. I usually scourer the internet, recollect my favourite scenes in books/movies, listen to music etc. until I have a solid foundation that gets me excited about the story.

Also, just to note, I’m not talking about epiphanies or getting over the block. I’m talking about slugging through the lack of ideas by pounding against them until you get a breakthrough. That’s what I will be sharing with you.

• The Prompt Finder

So you go to http://www.google.com right, then in search you type in “(Genre) writing prompts” and voila, an entire internet of results. Then you open about 100 tabs and read through all of them until a particular idea lights the fuse of your creativity. Sometimes it’s the 42nd tab (pun).

Letterpile – Horror Story Ideas

PS: You know it doesn’t have to follow the prompt to the T right? Just enough to put fuel into the fire.

• The Reddit Prowler

Reddit is as close to the dark web as I will ever get. The things you find on it are just… wow/disturbing. Nonetheless, there are plenty of people like you and me, lacking inspiration, who post interesting topics, stories, and ideas to inspire. Below are my favourite horror haunts.

r/horror
r/nosleep
r/darktales

PS: There are other parts of Reddit that display the dark side of the human condition. I wouldn’t suggest visiting those places in fear you’ll be scarred for life. There are also really great fluffy places that I do not visit for the fear I’ll be scarred for life.

 

• The Myth Buster

Okay maybe not busting myths, but there is a lot of interesting creatures and entities in mythology and folklore that creep me out. Like the Jorōgumo, who is half spider half woman. She sometimes appears as a woman holding a baby, who asks men passing by to hold it. Only for them to discover that the “baby” is made up of thousands of spider-eggs… and they burst open.

Mythological Creatures
Mythology and Folklore (Blog Posts) – By Carin Marais

• The MusicMovieMan

So I love watching movies and TV series right. Right now I’m watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and it’s hilarious. Andy Samberg is my favourite person in the world. Sometimes you just watch something and it sparks a feeling. An idea. A story. Use it.

The second half of it is music. Usually the music I listen to reflects my mood. When I’m writing, I try to listen to songs that fit the mood of the story, the scene or even the character. For instance, when I wrote my short story called Love Will Tear Us Apart, I was literally listening (on repeat) to the Fall Out Boy version of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. When I’m writing a serial killer, I’ll plug in Slayer or Slipknot or something heavy. The music creates scenes in my head. It’s beautifully disturbing.

My Story Idea

So I perused every prompt, listened to many songs, watched series, went out for walks, and pet other peoples dogs. The story that I dreamed up was uninspired and boring. And then I read this really deep blog post about regret. That’s an emotion I resonate to a little too strongly. Then I read about a creature that possess people, and me, I love this kind of stuff right. Then the two ideas merged into my next NaNo Novel…

Emotionally Charged Horror Novel

There was a person (who lived with some sort of very deep regret) and a creature (who fed on it and took over this character) and lots of people died horrible gruesome deaths (trying to protect themselves from the regret-filled human-creature trying to fix his mistakes or trying to get rid of the creature by fixing their mistakes).

So expect lots of emotive language, broken characters, gruesome deaths, and plenty of crying. It also sort of fits how I’m feeling right now.

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How’s your NaNo planning going? Are you experiencing any writer’s block? How do you overcome “The Block” and what sites/music/blogs do you use to help you in your writing?

Genre Writing: NaNoWriMo Prep

Man oh man is time flying or what. One minute I’m bidding “July” adieu and next moment I’m prepping for NaNoWriMo.  I also wrote and posted my Horror Genre Writing series during September which just flew by. Since it’s October, a.k.a. Halloween, I decided to carry on the series. The difference this time? It’s your journey through my mind as I plan out my NaNoWriMo Horror Novel!

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I’m sitting here at my desk, wondering what I will be writing for NaNoWriMo. To be honest, I think my mind is tired and will need to be energized. The reason I say that? Well, when I created my beautiful new NaNo novel on the site, I used the following details:

Title: Some Horror Thing
Author: Silvanthato
Genre: Horror/Supernatural
Synopsis: There was a person and a creature and lots of people died horrible gruesome deaths.

Yes. That is exactly how I will be approaching NaNo this year. Zero plan. One premise. Two characters. Three plot points, and four weeks to coalesce it all into a 50,000 word novel. Fantastic ain’t it? It better be, since you’ll be along with me as we shape and mould nothing into something. I hope to please.

The Plan

Right, so this is where I say something like “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” or “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” and extrapolating that into a 1000 word essay on planning. Well I’m sorry to disappoint, this will be very simple:

1. Figure out an actual story.
2. Detail actual characters.
3. Define plot points.
4. Worldbuild it all together into a masterpiece.
5. Write 50,000 words. (In November)

This also covers what the following weeks in Genre Writing are going to contain for October. Building a horror story, creating characters for this story, defining horror plot points (without spoilers!), and worldbuilding to correlate characters to story to the world around them.

Onward to NaNo

I don’t really know how I feel about NaNo this year. There’s no real excitement or desire or fear or anything. Just another writing project to get through.

If you have any tips, advice, blogs, websites, Pins, Tumblr accounts, music or even YouTube vids that you think will help me craft a mind-blowing story (horror or not), then please let me know in the comment section below. I’d greatly appreciate your help.

Now back to writing!

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Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Do you have your novel/story idea ready? What helps inspire you during the grueling 30 day challenge?

NaNo Insights: Week 4

I stretched over the 30K line. Barely. Statistically I should be at 35K words by now but 72% of all statistics are made up anyway so whatever right? You may be asking the same question I ask myself every time I fall another 1666 words behind with each missed day; will I make it to 50,000 words.

The answer is as mysterious as the novel I’m writing. Would you believe me if I told you that at 30K, I finished the first of three arcs in the story? Yep, that was just the introductory section and if I wrote it right, when you get to the end of it you should be like:

Now the hard work begins.

I have to tie them all in during the middle ground, building the tension and drama and action that led to that (hopefully) shocking first arc. Answering all the major questions that would be running through the readers’ minds. The only problem is… I know what has to happen, I have no idea how. Most authors will know, sometimes your characters just jump into their roles and lead the story along a different path to what was initially planned. A lot of times I had to rope them in and at least let them run parallel to the plan which rounded up perfectly after all. The story is on track.

What’s really satisfying is the fact that I’m happy with my story so far regardless of word count. That quality vs quantity idea, of building a more a solid work to edit later, turning out better than just a rambling of words that I know I’ll probably delete later anyway. While others may be happy to say,

“It doesn’t matter, they added to the word count and that’s awesome!”

I’d rather say, at least in this point in time,

“They were worth adding to the word count and that’s great!”

I may be behind on but guess what:

 

 

Nano Insights: Week 3

I spent the weekend reading 11/22/63. This book has helped guide me through a lot of issues I’ve been facing through my NaNo novel. Considering that the actual plot only begins just past half way makes you wonder what the first half of the book was all about. It was world building. It was making you care about the character. It was spent making sure that when the plot begins, you know exactly what’s at stake. If there’s one thing King always gets perfect in all his books, it’s what I’ve been struggling with: Tangible characters in a living world.

Cardboard characters. White space worlds. Cliché’s. Lack of any action/drama. I’ve spent most of my time editing what I’ve written in my NaNo first draft. Filling in the spaces. Deleting scenes that don’t work. Giving more colour to my characters. I know NaNo is about writing 50 000 words but I’ve come to realise that I have no reason to be happy writing 50 000 words for the sake of writing them while hating everything about them. I’ll probably delete or edit most of them anyway so why waste that post-NaNo time rewriting rubbish?

What I’m really enjoying about 11/22/63 is how real the characters feel. None of them feel like they exist for the sake of existing. They are real and tangible. The main character Jake Epping/George Amberson interacts with them realistically. I don’t need to remember who was who again. They have their own personalities, looks, and feelings. You can feel that it’s back in the fifties by the brief yet detailed surroundings that the characters interact with. You get the sense of an entire town from both the characters within and the environment they live in.

This is what I’m trying to achieve.

Sure the 1st draft won’t be perfect the first time but I’d be happier if I was as close to perfect as I can get it. It will make the rewrite and editing less work. It will make me happier with the effort I’ve put in. It will make this NaNo not just successful, but worthwhile.

I want to make every word count.

NaNo Insights: Week 2

 

It’s been horrible. I’ve written about 3000 words in total and they are all 1st drafts of the opening scene from different perspectives. In short, I’ve barely started. I’ve been feeling like an inadequate writer after my first draft. Everything I wrote just felt and read amateurish. I was sure I’d never write a decent novel for the rest of my life… okay maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but you know what I mean.

I spent the weekend procrastinating. I didn’t touch my novel following an entire Friday attempt. Every time I thought of my novel I’d either think about starting anew or starting a completely different story. This morning, Monday the 7th, I decided to read the opening chapters to some of my favourite books. Specifically Whisper in the Dark by Robert Gregory Browne and The Program by Gregg Hurwitz. I then read a couple of short stories from a random site on Google. The conclusion? My writing wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.

I’ve gone back to one of my more favourite drafts and decided to take a second bash at it. Perhaps bolster my word count up to 4000 words by the end of the day for this particular draft which is currently on 1701 words. That means I’ll be “discarding” the other drafts and not counting those towards NaNo. I know I know, every word counts, but I want every word that counts to count if you know what I mean.

Well, on wards to glory!

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How’s your NaNo writing coming along?