WriMo Ireland

(X-posted to my LiveJournal)

Still swamped in school assignments, I’ve hardly the time to work on my novel plot, but I recently found this quick fix in last month’s Writer’s Forum. Hope these few tips by Vanda Inman (her words in bold) will help me and other writers struggling with their novel’s storyline :

1) Keep writing and trust that your creativity will step in – you may be surprised.
(Tested and approved by your humble blogger during NaNoWriMo 2007 )

2) Transport one of your characters to a completely different situation and see how they react – you might gain some insight which will drive the plot in another direction.
(See what I wrote in How to increase your word count about writing gratuitous scenes )

3) Decide on the ending, then allow the middle to unfold.

4) Identify the theme of the story – what it’s really about – and how you want your characters to change by the end.

5) Draw a mind-map or flow chart of possible scenarios and endings. Then try making an outline of how the story could work in different combinations.
(That’d be like writing a RP chronicle scenario, wouldn’t it ?)

6) Use the ‘what if’ thought – what if a character does this instead of that ? What if the ending is poignant instead of happy ?
(I’m doing that all the time and I get so confused and entangled I just wanna scream !! >_< You might also want to follow Cavantucky’s advice and ask yourself the following question : What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character ?)

7) Don’t always go for the most obvious ending – try an alternative that hasn’t been used before.

Remember – the plot is never is never really lost. It has simply taken an alternative route for a while, and searching for it will take you a number of paths which will make your story all the stronger.
(I totally agree )

I promised Laryskun I’d post these – we talked about them when we met earlier today, so at least we talked about writing even if we didn’t get any done!

This list came from one of the NaNoWriMo sessions at the Seamus Heaney Centre (Queen’s University), from Ian Sansom (who was leading the sessions).  They are all things to consider when editing your novel – I think they’re valid when you’re writing it in the first place, too!

1. Vocabulary – are you using appropriate words for your audience, your genre, your characters?
2. Organisation – the arrangement of your bits of story
3. Flow – does your story and its parts (e.g. dialogue) flow well when you read it back?
4. Transistions – more of the above, I think; how well the connections between ideas work
5. Structure – the elements of the story; its beginning, middle and end
6. Audience – what knowledge do your audience have of the story’s setting and characters; what knowledge do they need to have for it to make sense?
7. Tone – the manner and spirit in which your story is written, e.g. lighthearted, serious, sombre
8. Style – the cadence of the story (I can’t remember exactly what he meant by this – anyone? I suspect it was to do with things like whether it’s in first or third person, etc, unless that fits under tone…)
9. Clarity - are your ideas expressed clearly?
10. Accuracy – how well does your story match reality? (not something us fantasy authors need to take into quite as much consideration…)

I remember being interested to see how closely this list matched the things I consider when writing a technical document as part of my work, such as a software user guide…

Hi, I’m Larys. This is my first post here. As a starter, I want to share a few tips to increase your word count while writing a NaNoWriMo novel that still (kinda) makes sense and in a funny way. I experimented them during this november and they worked pretty well. So here we are :…

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