NaNo Help: Plot

Characters may be the most important thing in writing (at least in my opinion), but plot is literally what stories are about. Plot is the backbone of a story, and without a plot you don't really have much. Plot is what pushes your characters forward, its what keeps the story moving, and gives it purpose....

NaNo Help: Characters

Characters are the most important element of story telling, at least in my opinion. Without them, nothing would be worth reading. To write a good novel, you have to have great characters, and you have to know them well. And with NaNoWriMo, when you're trying to write an entire novel in a month, its extremely...

NaNoWriMo 101

It's October now, which means November is coming up fast, and with it, NaNoWriMo!Over the coming weeks, I'll be writing a series of blog posts to help you with NaNoWriMo, should you choose to participate. But today, the basics. What Is NaNoWriMo? First off, what the heck is NaNoWriMo? Honestly, it a good question, because...

Preptober!!

Today is the first day of October, and for those of us who are doing NaNoWriMo, that means the start of Preptober! You may be wondering what Preptober is, because you've never heard of it before. I hadn't heard of it until last year either. Preptober is the month before NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month,...

Outlining: Why, How, and My Method

There are three different types of writers, the plotters, the plansters, and the pantsers. Each one writes theirs stories in a different way. Plotters plot out their story before they start writing, so they have a clear path they can take when working through their novel. Pantsers have no plan, they write by the seat...

Camp NaNoWriMo: My Tricks

If you hadn't already guessed, I'm doing Camp NaNo this year. Now, I've never done Camp NaNo before, but I did win NaNoWriMo last November, so I've learned a few things about writing THAT much in a month. First, What is Camp NaNo? Camp NaNoWriMo is much like NaNoWriMo, except instead of an already set...

Lessons I Learned From NaNoWriMo

I, much to my surprise, won NaNoWriMo for the first time ever! Actually, this is my first year doing NaNo at all, so this was a HUGE accomplishment for me. It also taught me some vital lessons about writing that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. Writing Fast Helps With Plot Holes Generally, I would start...

Surviving NaNoWriMo

It's day one of NaNoWriMo! You know what that means. It means everybody is sitting down, staring at a blank screen and going, 'why the heck did I commit to this?' I know I did. Of course, once you start writing, that feeling goes away. And 1667 words a day isn't really a crazy amount,...

Are You Ready For NaNoWriMo?

As NaNo draws near, it's really only a week away, I know I'm asking the question: Am I ready for NaNo? And maybe you are asking this question too, because, are you ready? You don't want to jump into NaNo unprepared, you want to be ready to write 50,000 words in the month of November....

Writing Your Second Book, Why It’s Different From Your First

Writing your first novel is exciting and hectic, but writing your second book is vastly different.When you write, you learn. You discover your voice, the things you're best at, and how to make it look like you know what you're doing. And that's why writing your first novel is different from your first, because you...