In October I really got my butt in gear and started planning for this years NaNoWriMo. I’m so glad I did. In this post I’m going to cover what went wrong, what went right, my highlights and low lights of this years November writing effort.
Section 1 – What Went Wrong
- It happened again. The character who I thought was going to be my main character wasn't very interesting. I'm always afraid to make my main characters flawed because I feel like they are heroes. Heroes are supposed to be great people, and they are also supposed to have great qualities. My problem is that I don't allow my main characters to have enough flaws and they end up being boring.
- I had a hard time saying no to commitments outside of writing and had a few days where I wrote less than 500 words per day
Section 2 – What Went Right
- Mapping tool - I found an excellent freeware tool that allowed me to create maps of the world I was writing in. This helped a lot because I was able to picture where the characters were.
- I Changed my idea in the last week of October. I decided that the old idea was not really book length. The new idea turned out to be great!
- Tried a new thing - Fantasy instead of Sci-Fi
- I started using a mind mapping tool called Scapple (from Literature and Latte - the Scrivener people) to flesh out ideas.
Section 3 – Things I’m not sure about that I intend to look in to
- I ended up with a lot of Dialog intense scenes
- Several of my characters really started coming out of their shells and definitely stepped up to have their own character arcs. I’m not sure all of the character arcs were justified, or that they all really add and compliment the main arc.
Section 4 – The Highlights For Me
- I really found out what people mean by letting your characters tell you no.
- I’m excited about the world building I did, and I’m planning to write some short stories that take place there.
Section 5 – Wrapping Up
- This year I was much happier with what I wrote. It felt good
- I’m ready for a break from this novel, but I’m not looking for a break from writing.
Dave Stoyles NaNoWriMo Stats for 2018
Overall, I made progress every day and didn't run in to a big deficit. This year I had some extremes in daily word counts. Some days I wrote fewer that 500 words, and other days I wrote more than 3,000.
