Kaye Dacus's Blog, page 70
October 30, 2013
#NaNo Prep: Feet to the Fire Time—Post Your One-Paragraph Pitch/Summary for Your NaNo Story
If you’ll remember (or if you’ll go back and read it now), last week we discussed how to figure out what your story’s about before you start writing. A big part of that post is on writing your one-paragraph pitch/summary. So now it’s time to put your feet to the proverbial fire and make you […]
October 29, 2013
I am the 50,000 #NaNo
I’ve seen this floating around on Pinterest and a few writing blogs, so I thought I’d jump on this meme.
October 28, 2013
Quick Reference Resources for NaNo or other Writing Marathons
As we looked at last week, when you’re fast drafting, or draft writing, you need to be able to get through your word-count quickly, which means that if you must stop to look something up, you need to make sure you’re not wasting time doing it. So here are some quick-click reference resources that you […]
October 24, 2013
NaNo Prep: Setting Daily Word-Count Goals and Tracking Your Progress
Two main things that can really help motivate you (or discourage you) when you’re participating in a marathon writing challenge are setting daily word-count goals and then tracking your progress. Setting Daily Word-Count Goals When you know you have a certain total word-count you want to reach by a certain date, you need to break […]
October 23, 2013
NaNo Prep: Draft Writing vs. Regular Writing
One thing that can make a writing marathon like NaNoWriMo discouraging and make writers want to give up is the failure to realize the difference between draft writing and regular writing. Regular Writing In your normal, everyday writing life, when your main goal is to get something written every day, be it a paragraph, a […]
October 22, 2013
NaNo Prep: Taking Pre-Planning Your Story a Step (or Seven) Further with an Outline and/or Synopsis
In addition to the blurbs and one-page synopsis that you can do in preparation for a marathon writing session like NaNoWriMo, you can go ahead and try writing out a full synopsis. A full synopsis can be anywhere from five to ten pages, but the general rule of thumb one synopsis page to every 15–20k […]
October 21, 2013
NaNo Prep: Figuring Out What Your Story’s “About” Before You Start Writing
One of the essential ingredients in pre-planning your writing in order to be able to churn out a high word count in a short time span is to know what your story is about before you start writing. And there are several exercises you can do to figure this out. (And this makes another good […]
October 17, 2013
NaNo Prep: Creating a Style Sheet
One of the most important things you can do in preparation for starting a new project is to make lists. We’ve been covering a lot of the information that usually would go on these types of lists, but I don’t want to leave a very important list out. The Style Sheet When I was editing, […]
October 16, 2013
NaNo Prep: Adding Secondary and Minor Characters to Your Story Bible
We spent the first couple of days of this prep series discussing your main characters and all of the information you should/could collect and record about them in your prep work before you start writing. Now it’s time to turn our focus on . . . Secondary and Minor Characters To begin with, let’s answer […]
October 15, 2013
NaNo Prep: Dressing Up your Story Bible
Yep. We’ve finally gotten here. Today, it’s time to talk about . . . COSTUMES! Whether you’re writing ancient Rome, Regency England, Mars Colony circa 2445, or a world of your own making, your characters will, in most cases, need some kind of garments to wear. (The ones who don’t . . . well, that’s […]
