I’ve read with some dismay a lot of people writing the same thing over and over again. “My word count total was 12,000 words for NaNoWriMo.”
A few people wrote rants about NaNoWriMo, along the lines of “Arbitrarily chosen word counts” “Waste of time” etc.
And some people consoled themselves with, “If you wrote one word, you were a winner.”
As gently as I can, let me debunk all these. Don’t be upset, forgive me, because I’m going to tell you how you’re sabotaging yourself, how to fix it, and what really is a winner.
Let me stop to repeat the goal of NaNoWriMo.
“NaNoWriMo is the event of writers everywhere WRITING A NOVEL in a single month with a word count of 50,000 words or more.”
If you did not write a novel, you did not win.
Don’t get mad, don’t stop reading. I’m about to tell you why this was a thing of the past, and how you’re going to fix it!
You are indeed a writer if you’ve written 20% of a novel. “Yes. I’m a writer.”
You’re not a novelist unless you’ve completed the first draft of a novel.
What went wrong?
Several things went wrong as you did NaNoWriMo. The goal is not to START A NOVEL.
The goal is to COMPLETE the first draft of a novel.
It’s not how slow you type. Recently I did learn that your writing is at its best when you’re writing as fast as you can. Why? It’s the question of why you’re writing as fast as you can.
You’re trying to get the words on paper before you forget them.
That means you see the scene.
That’s an important clue.
Here’s another. I’m always citing the 5p Principle, courtesy of a Kung Fu movie James Caan was in. “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.” Another one of these gems is “Fail to plan, plan to fail.”
Here’s what went wrong with NaNoWriMo.
You failed to plan properly.
It’s a thing of the past because in September and October I’m going to write – a LOT – on how to plan a novel. But let’s get to the shorthand right now.
You don’t have a system. You probably developed a character, and wrote a beginning of a novel based upon the character rather than the situation the character finds themselves in.
After introducing the character and the background, you ran out of words and momentum.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 8 novels with that kind of start. It’s 8 novels you’ll never finish. That’s not helping you. And you SEE THAT CHARACTER SO WELL – but I can’t see it because you haven’t written it! And I want to see this character that resonates with you!
Your character finds themselves in a situation. Notice my writing prompts in Twitter always are SITUATIONS, not CHARACTERS?
Your character must DO something, your you don’t have a novel. You’ve just got a character sketch, and those top out at 10,000 words max. And really, that’s stretching it.
“A person with a problem needs to prevent/create/stop/start/do/accomplish X before Y, or Z will happen.”
That’s your elevator pitch/log line, etc. You should have done that first.
“Josiah Bratton is a US Marshal in the wild west who is sick of killing. He moves to a new town to recover, and finds himself facing the most ruthless gang in the southwest in a race to stop the gang before they get away with the biggest robbery in history.”
That’s my elevator pitch/logline for my NaNoWriMo book. I finished the novel in 22 days, because I knew where I was going.
You’ve got a Character that intrigues you. What’s the elevator pitch/log line? Write that.
Now, you need a Save The Cat flowchart. Don’t like that? Want to just sit and write your book?
Proper planning prevents poor performance. Fail to plan, plan to fail.
DO THIS.
Simply 1-14 on a piece of paper or in Scrivener. I usually do my planning in paper and pen. It accesses a different part of your brain.
Write out your act 1, act 2 and act 3 turning points. Write out your inciting incident. then fill in all these points in this order…
Opening scene, theme, Setup, inciting incident, debate, break into 2, B story, fun and games, midpoint, bad guys close in, all is lost, dark night of the soul, break into 3, finale, final scene.
You’ll notice a couple of those you’ve already done.
Here’s the next part. Second sheet of paper, 21 points. You’re going to take the 15 points of Save The Cat and expand those within the framework of a STORY. It requires 6 more plot points.
Now, here’s the last part. Write out plot points 1 through 60. Fill in the 21 points you’ve got so far. Remember that break into two happens at point 20 and break into 3 happens at point 40.
If you do all of these steps, you will win NaNoWriMo every year.
I guarantee this is what went wrong. You did not plan out these steps.
Here’s one more thing to do – get MAD at all the people on Twitter who are trying to fill your head full of talk “it’s okay to lose NanoWriMo.”
You’re allowing them to steal your victory.
NaNoWriMo proves you can do it. NaNoWriMo proves you’re a good writer. NaNoWriMo’s unspoken lesson is that when you think you’re out of words, out of ideas, you find suddenly you have it in you. You reach down deep and the ideas are there, the words are there all along.
If you allow yourself to give up, you never learn these lessons.
Do not allow defeat to dictate your life. You’re a writer, right? Writers write.
You’re a novelist, right? Writers write novels.
is 50,000 words an arbitrarily chosen number? Not at all. It’s the bare minimum for a novel. Most of you are writing in genres that require almost twice that number of words.
Don’t settle for thirty five starts of novels. You’re in this to win this.
Write the novel! Get it done!
Here’s one final saying – winners never quit.
now say that backwards.
You’re winning NaNoWriMo every year from now on.
