Preparation for NaNoWriMo

Personally, I will be taking on two projects for NaNoWriMo this time around. One is for an anthology I intend to submit to a 20Booksto50k anthology. The other is Cursed, the second book of the Spellbound mini-series. Here are some things I plan to do for preparation and the word count I intend to put out to get there.

Daily goal for weekdays (Monday-Thursday)- 500 words/ 1.5-2 pages per day= Total 8,000

Daily goal for weekends (Friday-Sunday/ Thanksgiving)- 2625 words per day= Total 42,000

I know this sounds strange, but I’m more productive on weekends and don’t want added stress during the weekdays with my lesson planning. I also have some days around Thanksgiving where the school will be closed.

Preparation beforehand-

Characters–

I have pre-made Character Profiles for each character. If you don’t have time to do this I recommend just writing down their basic looks and 10 things your reader will never know about your character. This often leads to some of those things bleeding into your writing in unexpected ways.

Plot–

I have done a pretty basic outline that includes a climax, the direction I want the overall plot to go and a general how I plan to get there plus how I plan to wrap it up. You can view my bare bones outline Cursed Outline. I struggle most with endings and character revelations, so as I expand that’s what I’ll be focusing on.

 

Setting-

I have a good idea of the setting, but I plan to do some Historical research since it will take place in the early 1910’s. I’m going to write out any important details I want to give to the reader to help them ground themselves in the chosen time period.

Templates For Your Writing Project

I took a free online class that offered a great templates for Character creation, so I’m leaving that template with my writing as an example for you to view.

Preparation for my short fiction-

This is something I’m re-working, so the first thing I plan to do is make a character outline for the two main characters. I will also take my previous critique done on the story into account and write out how I plan to address each of the things that the critique group thought the story was lacking.

Finally, here are some Preptober prompts to help you. I’ll be using these as well to help build my story before November.

Nice job! You made it to the end of the article!

 

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