Prep Work

Career arc for your player? Doing a video game or something?

I've got some basic data, some floorplans laid out in The Sims 2 to avoid any placement snafus like in '05, and most of the main characters modeled out in Smackdown Vs. Raw 07. Apperantly, this year I'm using video games as creative media...

(>o.o)> <--Kirby FTW.

At this moment I'm scrambling to do research. I only found out about this a few days ago...it's my first one. I've written a lot of short stories, but I've never yet been able to complete a novel--I usually get stuck around the 20k mark before collapsing in to a quivering heap of insecurity and self-loathing about my writing skills. As it happens, my vacation started 36 minutes ago, which I scheduled before I knew about this. If I were a believer in destiny or fate, I might say the fact that I just happened to take my vacation towards the beginning of November before I found out about Nanowrimo meant that I was "supposed" to do this. But I just consider it a happy coincidence. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few good chapters written before I have to go back to being a wage-slave.

So, indeed, research; I'm perusing every book, article, website, documentary, and other media I can find on the subject I'm writing about, and I still feel woefully unprepared to start this. I don't usually use outlines or notes, but I'm considering it for this because of the the length of the work and the limited time we have to complete it.

I'm pretty comfortable with my plot, but I only have vague sketches of my characters. Characterization is typically my weak point. Anyone have any tips on creating believable, well-rounded characters? Quickly? Like, say, by next week?

Anyway, good luck to everyone. May we all become the next [insert favorite author here].

I have a submission to get in the mail on Mon... then I can focus on the actual outline/character stuff. So far I know the title/genre/players/opening/setting. I still need to confirm the time period Anise astral travels to (I'm thinking pre-Civil War era) and particulars on the location.

I'm sooo far from where I was last year.

I've had to sacrifice a lot of my prep work to other various aspects of life, including schoolwork and job searching, but I've come up with basic sketches of my character (it helps that some of them have been in my head since about January XD) and an outline for about the first third of the book.

One thing I'm doing that might be helpful to others is to identify the scene I want to start with and then write a scene before that. And then a scene before that. And before that. In other words, I'm going to write a prologue to my prologue to my prologue, and have about 10,000 words before I even "begin" the novel.

Yeah... just realized... me? Prepwork? Apperantly I'm either learning/growing up/in need of meds.

Anyway, Mrcrunge: talk to them. I know it sounds wierd, but if they can't respond naturally then they won't really be round or realistic. Also, don't strive for that. The beauty of nano is that the speed smooths over a lot of your supposed weak points. They'll develop on their own and you'll follow.

At this point my outline is pretty vague. There's a small town that will 'host' the off-season blahs that set in for the locals while they sneer at my enthusiastic MC. There are a couple of people I've sketched out in my head - basically people who are worn out for the tourist season at a lake and have preconcieved ideas about MC. MC is just looking for peace and quiet, but keeps having small problems.....all very very vague which hopefully the demons in my head will whip into shape as soon as I'm allowed to actually put something on paper.

Word count won't be my problem.

At this point I have the 'pre-exam blahs'. You know.....you've studied so much that you couldn't possibly look at more notes without throwing up. I'm too busy taking care of other life details to really get 'up' for the writing, and I keep looking at the calendar hoping that Thursday is tomorrow morning, not still a few days off. *sigh*

Prep? Work? These words, I don't think I know them.

Sadly, I've done no prep whatsoever for my novel this year. I do know that my main character [possibly named Adeline] will have a boyfriend, and that's pretty much what I've got. I'm playing around with possible narrative styles, and while it keeps showing up first person, I think the way the story breaks down will be slightly different than what I've written before.

So, in short, I have no idea.

Gayle

mrcrunge,

The best trick I've learned about characters is to steal from your friends, at least for the first draft. Think of the people you know and base some part of your character on them. Got a friend who cooks? Make a character a chef. Your sister starts every morning humming the "Manama Song" from "The Muppet Show"? So does the boss of your main character.

And if end up with a few people sounding flat by the time you're done, don't worry about it now. Aim for word count if you start to flail. And if you're still worried about characterization, get embarrassing stories from your other NaNoers and reconfigure them to work with your characters. It's helpful [i]and[/i] you get a cheap laugh.

Gayle

Well, I have the first 11 Chapters outlined along with character outlines for the main players in the story. If it's like previous years, I'll be well into another direction by Chapter 11 but I'm going to outline further anyway in case it stays where I want it to stay.