Ready for NaNoWriMo?

LTUE Blog post Written by Stephan Fassman

Edited by Nick Mills and Bren Laken

NaNoWriMo starts NEXT week, and LTUE wants to encourage everyone to go for it this year (even if you only want to do it just a little bit). There’s a lot of stuff happening out in the world, we know, we get it, but NaNoWriMo can feed your soul with the act of creation. You are allowed and deserve to treat yourself. Whether you are a pantser or a plotter, this is your chance to make a story. We can help.

One thing I have found is that many people expect to make a perfect story on the first draft. That isn’t what NaNoWriMo is about. This is about getting the idea out of your head and on “paper”. Ideas need to be born and put onto the page so they can grow. We need to give them room to breathe.

I am an engineer and a writer. In our engineering projects in the past we’ve never had a perfect product on the first try. We never will! For example, my engineering team was tasked with making an office phone system that could function wirelessly. Our first effort was to make a prototype. We just needed to see if we could make a radio that could do what the customer wanted it to do. Boy howdy, was it ugly! We had demo boards and wires spread out over an entire workbench. It was missing a lot of parts, but we faked it with test equipment (this is like the <TO DO> sections in your stories). We were able to inject a signal into the input and see the output on an oscilloscope at the other end. We cheered because it finally worked and we proved it could be done.

That’s all a first draft HAS to be, and NaNoWriMo is all about first drafts. It just needs to tell your story and prove to you that you can get your main character from point A to point Z. You can do more than that if you are ready and able, but it’s perfectly fine to have some sections with instructions to yourself such as, <WRITE COOL ACTION SEQUENCE HERE WHERE HERO LOSES THE MACGUFFIN TO THE VILLAIN.> Or you could have important characters just appear because you are going to go back and introduce them properly earlier in the story. Right now, you just need to focus on the story line for the main character.

That’s just what we did on that radio job. For our second prototype we made a single motherboard for the radio. It was far too large, but we were still refining everything. We had learned enough to take the next step to level up. Putting everything on a single circuit board helped us make decisions about what parts to use, where to place them, and how to orient them in relation to the other parts that depended on them. The crystal oscillator was core to the design. We learned that it needed to be placed centrally because even at the speed of light, the signal was slow enough that it couldn’t get all the way across the board in time for when the other components needed that signal.

The second draft of your story is when you can worry about introducing the supporting characters in relevant ways. In the first draft (your NaNoWriMo version) you don’t NEED to show how relationships grow or change. You can, but it isn’t essential for NaNoWriMo. In the second draft (later on) you can find the big plot holes and fill them. For NaNo you just need to tell your story, even if it isn’t told perfectly.

In our third prototype we reduced the size of the board so it would fit in the proposed box and make it easy to manufacture. We were actually able to get it significantly smaller and it did fit within the bounds for the problem we were trying to solve.

For your third draft you can focus on making the story read smoother. You can fill in environmental details, colors, smells, and add greater emotional depth and fine tune the relationships between characters.

The primary purpose of NaNoWriMo is all about the first draft. One thing I’ve learned from LTUE about getting a first draft done is to JUST WRITE. And. Keep. On. Writing. There are some fun exercises that can help you keep writing.

One exercise that will help you get to know your characters is to have your cast eat an apple pie. How do they eat it? Crust first, or point first? Do they leave the crust and just eat the filling? Do they like it with whipped cream, ice cream, or cheese? Do they use a fork or a spoon? Do they sit near the pie tin at the table, or off in a corner? Do they flirt with any of the other characters while eating? Do they talk with their mouth full, or cover their mouth while talking? Do they tell stories and interact sociably, or do they brood alone by the fireplace?

Another idea for quickly making your characters feel more real is to ask what they do in their downtime? What do they do when there is nothing else that they HAVE to do? Do they fix things? Do they sleep or do a craft or hobby? Do they write home or go running? There are plenty of questions you can ask and many answer options you can choose from.

One favorite idea to help you know the heart of your character is to ask what their go-to emotion is. Do they fight, or are they prone to flight? Are they assertive and proactive, or do they procrastinate and need to be pushed along? Are they friendly or confrontational (or ice cold to other characters)? All these character traits are on a slider or continuum. They can be more, or less intense as needed to fit the purpose of your story. Take Frozen for example. Elsa tends toward flight (she often runs away from her problems). Anna prefers to fight when necessary (notice how she kicked Olaf’s head clean off).

One last idea to help you quickly understand (or define) your characters is the supermarket test. If your characters walked into a supermarket, how would they react? What would they notice first? What would they walk right past and ignore? What would they be drawn to, or RUN to like a little kid? What would their shopping cart look like if they filled it up with anything they wanted, and everything they needed?

The best thing about NaNoWriMo is that it lets you go into brainstorming mode. It lets you just tell your story in a quick draft. You can always edit later. In fact, most people I’ve talked to say the best practice is to edit later (after NaNo is over).

There are thousands of ideas and questions like the ones above that can enhance your brainstorming or drafting. In fact, if you give yourself a set of writing prompts – before 12:01 AM November 1st – it will help you keep moving past potential writers block. The writing prompts will give you insights into your story. In fantasy and fictional worlds, writers block is when even your imaginary friends won’t talk to you, BUT if you have a set of writing prompts and questions, it will be as if your fingers have “kissed the Blarney stone.”

You can find other ideas on the LTUE YouTube channel and on the NaNoWriMo website. You can also share your favorite tips and tricks on the LTUE Discord server.

And good luck writing (remember, you can should edit later!)