Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Prep work for NaNo

The goal of NaNoWriMo, as previously stated, is to write 50k words in the month of November. The goal is to write ALL of those words in November.
Knowing my own creative process - this is my prediction - I'll go along swimmingly for the first week or two, writing my 1666 per day, moving the story along. And then BOOM. Out of no where, the muse will disappear, or the plot will die out. So what can I do to prevent that?

What I've done this year, is something that is apparently called a "style sheet", which is basically a cheat sheet about each major character. This way, I won't fall off track trying to figure out bits and pieces like where the main character went to college (University of Washington for a while then transfered to Boston College), or how many siblings the disapparing boyfriend has (2 a brother and sister, both younger, but not substantially). This also gave me a chance to map out the main character's relationship tree, how she's related to others, be it friendship, romantically, biologically, or professionally.
Lastly, one of the things that happens to the main character is that she sees things. Not in an Alice Cullen sees the future sort of way, but in a flashes of 'what might have been' sort of way... so I have to sort those out.

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