NaNoWriMo

First off, this is my first blog post as a college student. I feel so special, writing a blog as I sit at my desk in my dorm room at two in the morning.

Originally this blog post was supposed to be about different times of the day to write, and it was supposed to have been posted two weeks ago. But, in the true spirit of college and homework and procrastination, I stopped writing it halfway through. Then I realized that it is now October, and therefore time for the post I had decided to write about NaNoWriMo before it starts. Then I put it off again, and just realized that it is now almost November. So here it is.

What is NaNoWriMo?

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, I have the great pleasure of being able to tell you about it. If you do, skip this part.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The basic premise is that writers try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, in this case November. At 12:01 on November 1 writers all across the world will start to chug coffee and type out that first sentence. This may sound crazy to someone who has never done it before, but I cannot recommend it highly enough. It will change the way you view writing, editing, large projects, and personal goals. Something magical happens amid the mixing of a fast approaching deadline, a ridiculous amount of writing to do, and absolutely no time to do it in. Writer’s block dies without even the tiniest of protests, and ideas pour out of your head and onto the page. They may not be the best written ideas, but they aren’t supposed to be. The fact is that at the end of the month you have a complete rough draft of a novel that you didn’t have the month before. Isn’t that something?

Why should you participate?

Mainly, because it’s insanely fun. Seriously. What a wonderful excuse to shut yourself in your room for the month and get lost in your own world. What an awesome way to avoid chores and a social life and all those other pesky things we do every day, and simply focus on writing. Participating in friendly competition with people all over the world through the NaNoWriMo site is comparable to riding a roller coaster with a whole crowd of screaming people. All day long. Every day of the month.

Secondly, it will do wonders for your writing skills. It will help you get over your inhibitions – aptly dubbed the ‘inner editor’ by Nanoers – and learn to focus on simply getting words on the page. I’ve just started college, but I’m not afraid of any essays I may be assigned. If I can write a novel in one month, why should I worry about a dinky little five page essay? I’m confident in my writing abilities now. I know, without any doubt, that I can get enough words down on the page and edit them into something coherent.

Thirdly, it’s extremely liberating. The idea of NaNoWriMo is that you sit down with the sole intention of finishing the 50,000 word deadline. In essence, you give yourself complete permission to write total crap, excessively pad your word count with unnecessary fluff, and have fun without worrying about how good your book is. It’s like taking a vacation to a place where you are allowed to simply create, without fear of failure. Sure, at the end of the month your book might suck. But what first draft doesn’t? At least you have a book now.

Fourth, everyone else is doing it, so you’ll be taking the plunge alongside writers from all across the world. Not only is this fun, but it is also extremely motivating to be part of such a huge movement of writer momentum.

Fifth, for the kick of being able to say that you are a novelist, and mean it. For that sweet look of awe and admiration on people’s faces when you talk about your novel. For the wide eyed stares when you whip out your paperback copy (a free goody for winners provided by CreateSpace the last two years I’ve participated) for show.

               

Pre-planning vs. Randomness

Now, for those of you who do know what NaNoWriMo is. You can do an outline. Or you can wing it, and be surprised by the result. In the true spirit of NaNoWriMo, I threw out the idea I’d been planning on doing for almost a year and came up with a new one from scratch off the top of my head. It’s so much more fun that way. Granted, I’ve done planning since then. I’ve drawn maps of my world (fantasy, maps are kind of needed to make any sense at all of the story) and done some character outlines and back stories. I have a general idea of where I’m going. I work best when I don’t have anything too specific, though. What about you? Are you an outliner or a spur of the moment person?  How detailed (or lack thereof) have you gotten with planning?

Getting Ready for the Craziness

                I don’t know about anyone else, but I am so excited. My characters are chattering away in my head, begging to be unleashed upon a blank page. My fingers are itching to start telling their stories. I have a fridge stocked full of sparkling apple cider and Izze’s (my two favorite drinks), a shelf full of snacks, and a few pages of maps and character outlines. As is only polite, my friends have been informed not to expect to see me much in November. Actually, I doubt they needed to be informed, since I’ve talked about little else for the last month or so. I’ve got my backpack all ready to lug my computer around campus with me, just in case I get a few minutes to write here or there. All seems to be in order, and now I’ve got nothing left to do but wait. Which is maddeningly slow, darn it.

                Anyone else done preparing, or started? It’s getting rather close now, I know. What have you guys done to get ready, if you plan on participating?

               

                Whether you’ve planned ahead or not, whether you’ve made any preparations or are plunging straight in, I salute you for taking on this insane challenge along with your literary brothers and sisters across the world. I’ll try to keep some more frequent posts up during November to encourage and go along with NaNo, if I’m not too swamped.

Good luck!

Helpful links (I planned on making a few posts about planning during October, but I didn't get around to it, so these are some random links that might help you finish up the details on names, characters, outlines, and others before November. Sorry it's so late!) :

-NaNoWriMo Website

-Town Name Generator

-Fantasy Name Generator

-Helpful Scifi/Fantasy Tips and Worldbuilding

-More Worldbuilding Help, Step by Step

-The Evil Overlord List Note: I love this page so much that I will probably have a blog post entirely for it at some point in the future, but it may be helpful in avoiding or exploiting cliches now. Enjoy!

Music for Writing

                Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about music. Namely, the affect it has on my writing. That tune that plays while you write is essential, as I’m sure many of you know. It can set the mood for a particular scene or story, or it can provide inspiration when ideas are running low. I’ve had whole short stories and, once or twice, whole scene or novel ideas spring from lyrics in a single song. I’m sure people can relate.

                What music gets your muse working? What kinds of tunes send you into the writing mood? Answers are as varied as genres in literature. Some people will tell you that they can’t stand music while writing – only silence will work for them. Personally, I find it difficult to write without something playing. I never actually pay much attention to the lyrics or whatnot, but it creates a nice kind of background noise that I can’t do without.

Some people prefer classical, some jazz, some rap. Confession time – I listen to dance and techno while writing. Something about the fast pace really gets my author aura flowing. I find that the beats in such songs form a nice rhythm to type to and keep me going strong when otherwise I would probably grow lethargic. In the past I’ve also found that symphonic metal (preferably without screaming, which I can’t stand) works very well for epic battle scenes.

                Then there are those tracks that just seem to have been born specifically for you and your characters. We all know that movies have soundtracks, but I believe that most books have soundtracks as well, even if most people never get to listen to them. You know the ones – when a song will come up and you freeze, because you know the artist is singing about your character or book. I love it when that happens. Here are a few of mine:

                The song for the first two characters I ever had fall in love, who are still one of my favorite couples (Natalie and Jaden):Everytime We Touch - Cascada

                The song for another couple in a newer story, who probably are my favorite by now (Alice and Cael): Not Strong Enough - Apocalyptica

                The song for the last battle scene in the last book of a trilogy I did (same main character as the first love song above): Moondance - Nightwish

Those are just a few. One of my goals is that if I ever get a book published, I want to come up with a full soundtrack for it and have it somewhere people can find it – a website or something, I suppose.

Also, here’s a helpful link, since I said I’d be putting them up. Pandora Radio – free, easy to use, and my best friend for having writing music playing in the background: Pandora Radio

What kinds of music do you like to listen to while writing?    

The Middle Drags

It’s just a fact. The middle of a story drags when you’re writing it. The rush of adrenaline, excitement, and optimism of the beginning is past. The thrill of the ending is yet to come. And you find yourself stuck in between the two, with inspiration low and enthusiasm waning.

I’ve found myself there often enough. It happens to everyone. About this point you start to have doubts, if you haven’t already. Your story is stupid, the writing is bad, the characters are flat, the plot is boring, and you have all these random threads going everywhere and no idea how you’re going to pull them together to a smashing finale.

                So, what to do?

                First, keep writing. No matter what. It’s okay to take a break for a while, but if you leave for long you’ll never come back to it. Even if it’s just a sentence or two a day, at least you’ll be making progress, even if it’s forced. Don’t pay attention to how bad it may sound or how much you may dislike it. You can fix all of that later. Just keep things moving, or the story will go stagnant and stale. As long as you keep plodding on, you’ll eventually come to a place that you can be excited about writing again.

                Second, don’t ramble on. I tend to do this a lot in my writing. I’m not sure where to go, so I muddle around and poke at different ideas and let the pages of useless, unneeded, boring prose stack one upon the other. That isn’t moving forward. The trick is to keep the story fresh and interesting, rather than letting it go limp and lifeless and die, which is far too easy in the middle stages. There needs to be motion, there needs to be something happening. If there isn’t, make something happen. Do something unexpected or new. Throw a new character into the mix. Toss a random roadblock or unforeseen problem into your unsuspecting characters’ path. Kill somebody off. Make things difficult for them. Just do something. Try to plan out clear, ordered events that lead somewhere if it helps, or if you’re more of a spur of the moment writer pick something random, interesting, and full of doom for your characters and chuck it at them as hard as you can. It’s more fun than it sounds, I promise.

                Third, consider skipping some of the parts that may be boring you if you know where you want to wind up. I say this one with caution, because sometimes you don’t go back to parts you’ve skipped. You have to know what kind of writer you are. Personally, when I skip parts more often than not I never go back to fill them in. I’ve only ever filled in a skipped part once, and that only because I had a deadline to meet. (Deadlines and word goals, by the way, are amazing tools to help you get past the middle of your story. Particularly if you have someone to hold you accountable for said deadlines and goals.) So if you know you’ll go back and you think it might help, skip part of your story and move on.

                Finally, you might want to reread some of what you’ve written and try to take a fresh look at where you’re going. Do you have a particular place in mind that you want to end up? If not, it might be a good idea to think of one and aim for that, to give yourself direction and purpose. Are you bored writing your story at this point? If so, readers would probably be bored reading it, and you might need to take the story in a new direction or do something to revive it. Try to keep it on track, not wandering off in random directions where it might bog down and never get back up.

As always, published books are a great place to see how others have done it. If it helps pick up one of your favorite books, flip to the middle sections, and see what that author did to keep the story riveting and moving in the middle.  

First Posts and First Lines

So…first post! Welcome to Scriptum Scribbles, my everything about writing blog. Sorry if the name is a bit of a mouthful, I wanted something creative and couldn’t come up with much else. Scriptum is Latin for writing.

I’m kind of new at blogging, but I’m really looking forward to having fun with this. I’ll try to make my posts interesting, fun, and helpful. And why should I be able to help anyone with writing? I’m not published (yet, hope hope). The answer? I write. A lot. I have no life. I offer what small writing wisdom I’ve managed to gather through fruitless hours in front of a computer screen.

Opening lines

I thought for my first post I’d start out with a similar writing topic: the first line of a novel. Mainly, how to write one so that it doesn’t make you cringe. And believe you me, I’ve had many of those over the years.

The first line of a new project is one of the most important parts as far as the overall book is concerned, since it will determine whether or not a prospective reader (or publisher, editor, or anyone really) keeps reading or puts your work back down without another glance. You want to catch their attention, pique their interest, and give them a reason to keep their eyes moving down to the next line. Unfortunately, opening lines also tend to be a place that’s quite easy to get stuck at. Often people struggle and sweat over trying to get that opening line just right, and as a result never move past it.

Opening lines need to point out something about the story that makes the reader want to pay closer attention. Your line needs to scream out, “Hey, you! You need to keep reading because of this!”

But what if you can’t get it just right?

First is this: don’t cry over the first line if you can’t seem to get it right. Let it be bad if it needs to be, move on, and come back when you know more about the spirit of your story.

Second is this: if you’re having a hard time writing an interesting opening line, it might be because you don’t have an interesting first scene, which is very important. A reader might give a shaky opening line a chance if the next line, or the first paragraph, are interesting. But if you don’t have an interesting opening scene, you’re probably not going to get many people to get past the first page. If your opening scene is a character sitting underneath a tree, thinking about the weather and how bored they are with nothing happening…well, you could probably help your chances by choosing a more engaging first scene.

Action in a first line, paragraph, and scene is often a good idea. If not action, then point out something strange or odd. Something needs to be happening, have happened, or there need to be strong and interesting indicators that something will happen soon. The opening line either needs to raise a question that people will have to keep reading to find the answer to, or it needs to smack you so hard with action or with being so wacky that it fascinates. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an explosion or murder to get the story started. Another character showing up to begin the plot moving along could easily suffice, so long as something happens. Remember that the opening line doesn't just grab attention, it also starts the story out on its path. Starting at a place where nothing is happening doesn't do that.

 I’ve made this mistake all too often with many of my stories. I start out by describing the boring, ordinary, everyday life of the character so that I can show how it changes when the action starts, but what ends up happening is that the beginning is dull, and I’ll never get anyone to read far enough in to discover the action. What happens if you can’t make your story work with an exciting starting scene? Well, that’s where prologues come in. Write something exciting there to get the reader interested, and then go on to describe your innocently ordinary character in the first chapter.

Finally, the writing needs to be compelling. Nobody is going to keep reading a book if the opening line or paragraph is comprised of unvaried, boring, badly put together prose. Don't prattle on about it. Say what you want to say shortly, boldly, and fearlessly. Then jump right in and get on with it.

So, here are some examples from my own writing to point out some of what I mean. First, a bad one (yes, I’ll be showing bad examples of my writing. At least somebody will learn at my expense, hopefully.).

The hands on the clock ticked by, and I sighed.

Now, that wouldn’t be so bad if it were followed by an interesting first paragraph. However, the story then proceeds with an opening scene in which the character describes how bored she is at school, and nothing of interest happens until at least the second page. Yawn. If I picked it up in a bookstore, I probably wouldn’t keep reading.

Here’s a better one that I recently wrote, which I’m actually quite proud of.

It was on a bright and relatively cheerful seeming Sunday afternoon that the world ended.

See the difference? The first sentence is drab and boring. The second one smacks you across the face and screams at you (in a good way, of course). It makes you want to know why the world ended, and what people are going to do about it now. It shocks you. The first doesn't.

If you’re having trouble writing a good first line, try this: pick one or a few of your favorite books, and read the first paragraph. Try to think about what it is in that paragraph that interests you in the story. You might even try it with a book you haven’t read before, just to get the perspective of a new reader. If it’s a book you know well, think of a different scene it could have started with and try to write a new opening line for it.

And, remember, if you can’t get it, then let it be bad and come back later. That’s what editing is for, after all.