Thursday, October 27, 2005

NaNo Countdown

With only four more days to go before NaNoWriMo kicks off, I'm torn over how I should go about preparing. On the one hand, there's the urge to come up with a bunch of scenes and work out an outline so that I can keep my speed up and really make a pass at the 50,000 mark. On the other, though, I'm tempted to just leave it as is and see where it takes me. Anyhow, I thought I'd lay out what I have and hope that, when I've written it all down, it looks like enough.

Here's what I have:

Characters - The main character is pretty clear in my mind. Why? Well, because he's a terribly pathetic version of myself with all of my worst traits emphasized. It'll be the perfect read for anyone who's interested in my dark side. Anyway, after that, I've got some ideas about his two friends/co-workers. At this point, though, they're not really characters - just sketches characterized by one or two defining qualities. Finally, I have a pair of romantic interests to deal with. One is a very idealized character, and she's something of an enigma to me. The other one, ironically, is entirely enigmatic but I know exactly where I'm going with her.

Plot - If you're looking at plot in the most basic of terms, I have most of it down. I have a beginning, I have an incident that kicks things off, I have a middle and I have some vague ideas that come after a middle. An ending eludes me.

Scenes - I have a few specific scenes in mind, including the first, where my MC along with his two co-workers are having a meeting (they work at a "Woman Gives Birth to Alien Baby" type tabloid). I've also sketched out a few other scenes that will be placed near the beginning of the novel - mentoring in a bar, watching a high school play (where Mr. MC thinks obsessively about hitting a thick-necked kid with a golf club, just for kicks), surfing eBay and working on a novel. Beyond that, I only have a few ideas for scenes throughout the rest of the novel.

Looking on it now, actually, I think this might be enough planning to get me through.

5 Comments:

Greywulf said...

The only thing I've done differently to you is written a (very) short story starring my main central character, just so I can get the "voice" right. I thing that's an important step, and one that I don't want to spend any time in November working on.

I've got the character sketches put together for the main three protagonists, a rough outline of the storyline - and that's it. I'm itching to get started, but holding back until magical November 1st.

See you then :)

8:04 PM  
Lauren said...

Good luck!!! My boyfriend is participating in NaNo as well. I give you both a lot of credit.

11:46 PM  
Yzabel said...

If it can be of comfort, my own prepping hasn't gone much further than yours, and I think I have about the same amount of data in hands to start it. The only difference may be that I've had to writedown some "backstory elements" in order to not forget them along the road, as it's a sci-fi story, but this is anyway a necessity to compensate for my bad memory :)

1:20 AM  
Eric said...

Good luck to you all!

It an impressive endeavor I just don't think I'm quite up to yet.

1:09 AM  
Punk Parent said...

ONly a few hours left...I have Character outlines, a fairly detailed outline of the whole novel...a chart of the cosmology because it got kind of confusing, but it will be easy to read. Good Luck!!

4:49 PM  

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