NaNoWriMo Tip #13: Three Secrets To Save You From Writing Torture
These are my personal tips for
NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.
Here are three
devices that can save you centuries of torture in that special writer’s hell
reserved for writers who describe a nine day week.
1. Calendar
Start
with backstory and continue to the end of the book or beyond. Put ever offstage
and onstage action onto a calendar. Account for all major characters. Trust me.
This will save you so much grief! (I have such a hard time with this that I
often STILL don’t do it, even though I know better, and then I suffer for my
stupidity. O ye gods how I suffer.)
2. Map
If your story
take place in the “real” world, Google Maps is your friend. If you’re writing
fantasy, you must make your own, or hire mapmakers from the Renaissance Faire.
If you’re writing a historical, don’t just make up crap, crack a history book.
3. Mugshots
Keep a
record of all names of characters (with the correct spelling). Pretend you’re
the secret police and this is your file on them. Add any pertinent information,
like parentage or priors. A brief description
of them is also helpful—you can consult it if you need to refer to it in a
scene.
It’s fun and
surprisingly helpful if you actually find pictures of people who look like your
characters. Since this is just for you, you can choose famous people, actors
you’d want to play them in the movie version of your book, or you can just grab
photos from the internet like a crazed troll. (Just don’t use it for commercial
purposes, like your book cover.)
It works for places
too. Identify where each scene takes
place. Find pictures that look like these castle tower chambers, ski slopes or
high tech prison cells ahead of time. Even non-exotic locales can be enriched
if you look at photos of what you have in mind. It can inspire you to add
details to the description of the setting.
Finally, for action
scenes, you can find almost anything you need demonstrated on YouTube. I’ve
found dance sequences, fights with Zulu hand to hand combat weapons, and how to
add henna to your hair. Do this research ahead of time, because you know you’re
going to get lured into an hour of kitten Abba videos if you’re not careful.
You don’t want that to happen right in the middle of writing your scene.
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