More NaNo prep, wee~!

So, I’m still working out the details of my world and characters for this year’s NaNo. I’m getting to that point where I start to over think things and stuff gets too complicated (when it doesn’t need to be). I need to remember:  sometimes, less is more. And yet, I still have many things to figure out.

I’m making progress, though. It’s going slower than I’d like, but it is going. I’m discovering a few things about my main character, and have developed some (mostly vague) ideas for other characters as well. I also have started to flesh out some of my world, mainly its inhabitants. I’m finding the forums extremely useful for coming up with ideas and inspiration. Just reading about what people like or don’t like sometimes gives me an idea on which way to go with something.

As far as details, I need to figure out exactly what kind of government I want. At first I thought I would go with this being the capital city of a kingdom and have it ruled by a king. But now I’m not sure. I might go with a sort of city-state thing. Need to do some research in this area to see what will fit best for the type of story I have planned. Definitely not a democracy. Or maybe…  Argh. Also, there are so many smaller, specific things I need to work on, like individual characters and their relationships and what they look like, and what the city looks like, and everything. But I’ll get there.

Today I’ll be plotting pretty much all day. Hopefully by the end of the day, much progress will have been made.

Plotting for NaNo

Over the last week or so I’ve been spending all my writing time brainstorming for NaNoWriMo. At first, I had no idea what I was going to write about for this year’s NaNo. Usually I plan ahead. Pantsing doesn’t work out well for me. The couple of times that I did pants it, well, I managed to get about 10 or 11k into it and then couldn’t think of where to go from there. I’ve since realized that planning ahead is essential for my process. Sure, even when I plan, there are still surprises that will surface during the actual writing process, but I need to be working toward something, a plot point, or a certain scene. There needs to be a goal, and just ‘get to 50k words’ won’t do it for me.

So, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. Then one of our awesome ML’s suggested looking under the MSWL (manuscript wish list) hashtag on twitter to surf for ideas. Boy am I glad I took that suggestion! Right away I came up with a character that I wanted to write about. But for a while, it was only a vague character idea and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her, what kind of story I wanted to tell. Then, suddenly, inspiration smacked me right in the forehead (as it is sometimes wont to do) and just like that, I had my setting, the tone for my novel, as well as the type of story that I want to tell. Yay! I ran the (basic as it was) idea by a couple of fellow writers and they didn’t seem to hate it, so now I’m stoked about the path I’m on for this novel.

Now I’m into the phase where I’m fleshing out the details of my world. I’m asking myself questions about my characters and setting so that I can figure out exactly what they are, and how they interact with one another. This, for me, is the fun part. I get to design a city and populate it. What kind of city, how big, how many people live there, what are they like, where did they all come from, what is the government like? This is the point where ideas just start spilling forth and I have to keep my pen and notebook handy because suddenly things will just pop into my head at the oddest moments. It’s great.

Once I get all the details hashed out (or most of them) then I’ll go into ‘organizing the chaos’ phase, which is also fun. I will get more into the details of the actual plot and start a time-line (outlines don’t really work out for me, I don’t think in outline form), maybe draw a map up or something. I might also try note cards this year, but I’m not sure about that yet.

I still have a lot of work to do before November 1st rolls around, but I’m starting to get really excited about it, and that’s a good sign that this year will bode well for me.