NaNoWriMo, learning new things, and the Snowflake Method
Those who follow me on Tumblr will already know this, but I don't think I've mentioned it here, so - I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year! First time ever. And lookit, I get a little automatic wordcount widget :D
It's no secret that I've been trying to write a novel for over a year now, but surprisingly enough (to no one ever) it's been a lot harder than fanfiction. My fanfic approach is a pretty loose, dynamic thing where I have an idea and just write until I reach something that feels like a satisfying ending. I rarely know what's going to happen, or how it will end, because that's part of the enjoyment for me. However, applying this to original writing has been somewhat less than successful, leaving me stranded at 30k since January, and with a painfully low daily word count when I was working on it (500 words was a good day).
But this is where the joy of NaNo comes in, for two major reasons:
1) I couldn't start when I wanted to. I've had a new idea I've been dwelling on for a while now, but I'm not allowed to start writing it (even though I have the first chapter drafted, plus a handful of other scenes), so that means I've had to do something else with my time other than push out words.
2) What, for me, will be the biggest challenge -- the daily word count needed to "win": I'll need to aim for around 2000 words a day, 6 days a week.
Both of these things have led to me doing something I have never done before: planning D:
But what, exactly, to do?
I've been following this great blog on Tumblr called The Writing Cafe, which is chock full of useful resources. On there I'd seen quite a few mentions of the "snowflake method" for planning a novel, and so I decided to check it out. In short, it's a ten step guide to plotting your novel and creating your characters, and I liked the look of it precisely because it's quite prescriptive (I've often read interviews with authors where they make airy, hand-wavy mention of using post-its for parallel plotting and blah blah blah, but no one ever seems to get into the real nitty gritty of what to do). The snowflake method takes you right through from a one sentence summary in step 1, to writing the novel in step 10.
So a couple of weeks ago I started slowly constructing my snowflake, but I quickly realised I would have to make adjustments to suit myself and my novel. For example in step 2, you're supposed to come up with "three disasters and a resolution", which is the broad-strokes plot for the novel. But my story isn't an action thriller, it's a quiet internal piece about personal growth. I tried to bring in a new sub-plot to help me fit this structure but quickly realised that it wasn't going to work. However, it did help cement in my mind exactly what my story is about.
I also modified step 5, in which you write out more detailed character briefs. I followed the instructions for my minor characters (even though I'm not completely sure which of them will appear in the story), but for my two major characters I used a character questionnaire from The Writing Cafe: long version (used for my heroine) | short version (used for my heroine's romantic interest). I ended up including so much detail that I had also covered myself for step 7. (These questionnaires are an absolutely fantastic resource, btw - they will make you build up so much backstory for your MC that you can just drop the information into the story in the right pace without having to stop and think. They also really make you think about your character's psychology, and what impact their past has had in creating that/what impact it will have on their present interests, beliefs, pursuits etc.)
I ended up combining steps 6 & 8 partly because of time constraints (Nov 1st is coming up quickly!) but also partly because it just suited me better to do that. Working on what is supposed to be my scene-by-scene spreadsheet, it's become clear that I don't have a lot of detailed ideas for later in the story. The story is split into five sections, and I have managed to plan out the first section scene-by-scene (more or less, I'm sure things will change once I get going), but the second section is less detailed, and by the fifth section there's only the broad strokes. Personally, I'm happy with that. I still think the main part of my creativity is revealed during the writing process, and it's only as I spin the actual words that I have my really good ideas. But what I like about having the spreadsheet is that the framework is there and it's now going to be very easy to add in more detail as it occurs to me.
I'm going to skip step 9, because it just doesn't appeal, and so that brings me to step 10: write the novel! I'm about as ready as I can be, and I'm kind of astonished that I got there two days early :D (thus giving me time to figure out how to create a US bank account, look up shipping costs and all the other myriad details of moving to a new country waaaaaah)
Anyway, I thought I would share all of that because it's the kind of thing I would've wanted to read a couple of months ago! Obviously I don't yet know how successful it's going to turn out to be, but I'm feeling really positive about it. And of course I'll keep everyone posted about my progress whether you want to know or not :) If you want to see my actual docs (i.e. my step-by-step planning) just let me know and I will share them with you.
Oh, and just in case anyone's interested, I created a side tumblr as a kind of scrap book cum mood board for the novel here (image heavy).
It's no secret that I've been trying to write a novel for over a year now, but surprisingly enough (to no one ever) it's been a lot harder than fanfiction. My fanfic approach is a pretty loose, dynamic thing where I have an idea and just write until I reach something that feels like a satisfying ending. I rarely know what's going to happen, or how it will end, because that's part of the enjoyment for me. However, applying this to original writing has been somewhat less than successful, leaving me stranded at 30k since January, and with a painfully low daily word count when I was working on it (500 words was a good day).
But this is where the joy of NaNo comes in, for two major reasons:
1) I couldn't start when I wanted to. I've had a new idea I've been dwelling on for a while now, but I'm not allowed to start writing it (even though I have the first chapter drafted, plus a handful of other scenes), so that means I've had to do something else with my time other than push out words.
2) What, for me, will be the biggest challenge -- the daily word count needed to "win": I'll need to aim for around 2000 words a day, 6 days a week.
Both of these things have led to me doing something I have never done before: planning D:
But what, exactly, to do?
I've been following this great blog on Tumblr called The Writing Cafe, which is chock full of useful resources. On there I'd seen quite a few mentions of the "snowflake method" for planning a novel, and so I decided to check it out. In short, it's a ten step guide to plotting your novel and creating your characters, and I liked the look of it precisely because it's quite prescriptive (I've often read interviews with authors where they make airy, hand-wavy mention of using post-its for parallel plotting and blah blah blah, but no one ever seems to get into the real nitty gritty of what to do). The snowflake method takes you right through from a one sentence summary in step 1, to writing the novel in step 10.
So a couple of weeks ago I started slowly constructing my snowflake, but I quickly realised I would have to make adjustments to suit myself and my novel. For example in step 2, you're supposed to come up with "three disasters and a resolution", which is the broad-strokes plot for the novel. But my story isn't an action thriller, it's a quiet internal piece about personal growth. I tried to bring in a new sub-plot to help me fit this structure but quickly realised that it wasn't going to work. However, it did help cement in my mind exactly what my story is about.
I also modified step 5, in which you write out more detailed character briefs. I followed the instructions for my minor characters (even though I'm not completely sure which of them will appear in the story), but for my two major characters I used a character questionnaire from The Writing Cafe: long version (used for my heroine) | short version (used for my heroine's romantic interest). I ended up including so much detail that I had also covered myself for step 7. (These questionnaires are an absolutely fantastic resource, btw - they will make you build up so much backstory for your MC that you can just drop the information into the story in the right pace without having to stop and think. They also really make you think about your character's psychology, and what impact their past has had in creating that/what impact it will have on their present interests, beliefs, pursuits etc.)
I ended up combining steps 6 & 8 partly because of time constraints (Nov 1st is coming up quickly!) but also partly because it just suited me better to do that. Working on what is supposed to be my scene-by-scene spreadsheet, it's become clear that I don't have a lot of detailed ideas for later in the story. The story is split into five sections, and I have managed to plan out the first section scene-by-scene (more or less, I'm sure things will change once I get going), but the second section is less detailed, and by the fifth section there's only the broad strokes. Personally, I'm happy with that. I still think the main part of my creativity is revealed during the writing process, and it's only as I spin the actual words that I have my really good ideas. But what I like about having the spreadsheet is that the framework is there and it's now going to be very easy to add in more detail as it occurs to me.
I'm going to skip step 9, because it just doesn't appeal, and so that brings me to step 10: write the novel! I'm about as ready as I can be, and I'm kind of astonished that I got there two days early :D (thus giving me time to figure out how to create a US bank account, look up shipping costs and all the other myriad details of moving to a new country waaaaaah)
Anyway, I thought I would share all of that because it's the kind of thing I would've wanted to read a couple of months ago! Obviously I don't yet know how successful it's going to turn out to be, but I'm feeling really positive about it. And of course I'll keep everyone posted about my progress whether you want to know or not :) If you want to see my actual docs (i.e. my step-by-step planning) just let me know and I will share them with you.
Oh, and just in case anyone's interested, I created a side tumblr as a kind of scrap book cum mood board for the novel here (image heavy).