Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A beginning thought process

Getting Started on a Novel

In the beginning you have some ideas percolating in your mind. If you're an "Outliner" these get organized on a scrap of paper or some fandango word processing writing tool. As you write you keep that outline close and as ideas float in out of the "ether" you plug them in so they don't escape. If you're a "Pantzer" you just start pushing the pencil or pounding on the keyboard until you have a body of written material, hopefully not an overwhelming amount, and then you organize everything into an outline, before the story gets away and your bio-processor begins to smoke.

These are the two basic approaches. I strongly recommend you don't attempt NANO without doing the prep work and having an outline to guide your efforts. When I say outline I mean one that is full of reminders on how you are going to include the strategic, operational, and tactical considerations that will go into the effort.

By "strategic " I'm referring to the basic model you will be using and the basic components to be used in each of the chapters. For example in one of my references.... "Novel Writing for Idiots," the model I use is Story World, Central Character, Before Snapshot, Life Changing Event, Crisis 1, Crisis 2 and Crisis 3.

By Operational I'm talking about how the chapters are going to get strung together. Say Chapter 1 will introduce the Story World, Central Character and Before Snapshot. Chapter 2 will present the Life Changing Event. Obviously the beginning of a novel is important! Chapters 3-10 show Crisis 1, Chapters 11-20 Crisis 2 and Chapters 21-30 the final crisis or Climax. Well, sort of... you know plus or minus some, here and there.

Tactical Writing is writing a specific chapter. Here the components of a good chapter need to be evidenced like active voice, narrative, dialog, interior dialog, backstory, foreshadowing, symbolism and stuff like that. A good chapter isn't all dialog, narrative, backstory or any one thing but rather a blend of the different writing tools that make the chapter multi-dimensional.

There's plenty more but for that you'll have to sign up for the Exploratory Writing Workshop at New Horizon's Academy. If you aren't a glutton for persistence and hard work, save yourself the trouble.