Tag Archives: Story planning

Round 4!

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I can’t believe we’re already in the last round. This year swooshed by me! But here we are, time for the final round of ROW80 for 2018. At least goal setting for this round is always easy. It’s NaNoWriMo season! The goals practically set themselves.

The only hard part about goals for this round is what to do about December. I have so far never done a good job of keeping things rolling after NaNo, and this year I’d really like to change that.

I am mulling over how to make December not feel like a flop this time around. I’m thinking that separating my goals out by month might be useful, so I’m going to try that out.

So, here they are! My Round 4 Goals:

October:

  • Work on NaNo planning at least 4 times each week
  • Continue writing practice at least 3 times a week
  • Blog at least 3 times

November:

  • Work on my NaNo story at least 4 days a week
  • Run a weekly online write-in
  • Go to or host at least two in-person write-ins
  • Blog at least 2 times

December: 

  • On December 1, write a blog post with more precise December goals
  • Include some sort of work related to my NaNo story
  • Blog at least 3 times

Quick ROW80 Check-in

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I’m still moseying along in my plotting for “Haunt.” I’m trying to work through things logically rather than getting hung up on setting and meeting a deadline right now. I keep having to remind myself that I’m trying to really learn these novel planning steps, though. I want to race! But that’s not the way to cement my understanding of how all of these steps work together. I have a few more scenes listed with their basic summary sentences, so there is progress.

I’m really enjoying working with Storyline Creator in this process. I like how easy it is to move back and forth between the sections so if I have a thought about a scene (mostly right now it’s “what needs to happen before this to make this make sense?”), I can just switch over to the notes section and write out my ideas and questions, and then shift right back to the scenes list. It’s very smooth, very simple, and it makes sense to me when I look at it. I’m very glad I found this.

I hope everyone’s stories are moving forward, slowly or otherwise. Happy writing!

Progress

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This week, I’ve been working on scene lists.  It’s kind of a slow process involving examining what I’ve already written, rearranging things, setting some things aside, and lots of brainstorming and daydreaming about what the story needs.

I can tell that doing this slowly is working, and yet it’s still hard not to just jump in and start writing full steam ahead and see what comes out. I keep having to remind myself that I already have a draft of this story that I did that way, and it doesn’t work. This story, because of how I set it up, needs more planning. I need to know where I’m going before I head out.

I think the pressure to hurry up and write is because I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo. And of course the point of all the NaNos is to get words down. But I don’t want to get stuck in the same trap. I don’t want the last two thirds of my story to be just one haunted scene after another with no escalating conflict and no real reason why they ended up where they did at the end to have the final confrontation.

Oh, I did find a new tool to try out. I was wishing for a web-based Scrivener, so I went looking for alternatives. I found something called Storyline Creator. I just found it last night, so I spent some time moving my scene list over, and this morning I’ve added a few more scenes after a breakthrough last night. So far, I really like it. It’s a bit simpler than Scrivener, which for me is actually a plus. The only thing I’m wishing for is the ability to add images to character files (I think I’ll email them with the suggestion just in case they just hadn’t thought of it). That’s fairly minor, though, because you can add images to notes, so I’ve just been making notes for each of my major characters.

My goal for this week: finish the scene list (at least with the five major scenes and a few connector scenes) and start my one page summary.

Heading Into the Final Stretch

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November is almost over, and therefore so is NaNoWriMo. I’m still moving along. I’m no longer sure I’ll reach the end of the story by the end of November, though. An extra episode inserted itself into my story, so I’m not quite where I thought I would be at this point.

This afternoon, I’m going to take a little bit of time to do some planning for the next phases of the story and see if I might manage to still get to the end by November 30. I’ve never managed to do that during NaNo, and this year is the closest I’ve ever come, so I’m still holding out hope that I can make it work.

As soon as I post this, I’m going to take my stack of inspirational books and my story notebook and settle in with the fire going and music and the washer as background noise, and I’m going to get my writing done earlier today because I’ve been leaving it until too late at night all this past week. Things are nice and peaceful today, though, so it’s a good day to spend more time with my story.

I hope you’re having a great writing day!