3 Writing Tips for NaNoWriMo

Are you off and dashing? NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month–which challenges a writer to draft a book in a month–begins today and as you start furiously writing your story, I have three tips for staying on track and keeping your story moving forward.

1) Prewrite. I know that sounds crazy, but prewriting before you sit down at the keyboard, with a pencil/pen and paper will often give you the sort of creative jump start that can lead to more words on a whole, quicker and more easily. By drafting the ideas you have, or just playing around with your story for a bit of time before you start writing will get you in the right place and ready to write. Jot down dialogue–no tags, no descriptors, just the dialogue. Sketch out the setting. Write down what your characters WANT out of the next scene or scenes. I like to do to do this the night before I write, just to give the ideas a bit of time to ping around in the imagination.

2) Brainstorm. If and when you get stuck, make a List of 20 things. Anything. What can happen in the next scene. Where your characters will end up. Write down everything, no matter how crazy it is, just get to 20. Truly the good stuff comes bubbling up to the surface about numbers 16 and 17.

3) Drive Around the Accidents. Accidents happen in writing. Moments when the story detours. Something isn’t working. You can see where you want your story to go–say like in the next scene, but the current scene and your stubborn characters aren’t cooperating. Put a placemarker in your manuscript and skip ahead. Drive around the roadblock. And don’t look back until a solution presents itself. After having written 24 books, and driven around my fair share of writing collisons, the solution always comes up eventually.