Friday, October 21, 2005

Planning for NaNo

I've been trying to prepare as best I can for the insanity that is NaNoWriMo. I'm thrilled that several of my writing buddies are joining me -- but was tickled pink when "edeevee" hopped on the wagon (Hi D! -waves).

There have been discussions in the WVU forum I set up at NaNo about preparations. I'm not an outlining kinda gal, so that isn't what I'm doing to prepare. I typically start a novel idea with characters and then figure out what their conflict is. I fill out character sheets and scene cards and brainstorm beginning and end -- and then pray that the middle will fill itself in over time and with some elbow grease.

Today, I checked out Paperback Writer's Blog. She invokes the NaNo name and talks about building characters (and for anyone in the middle of creating their characters, she has some fun ideas). At the beginning of this post, she linked back to an older blog where she refers to the three questions she asks her characters. I thought it was a fantastic set of questions -- simple, but complete.

They are: Who are you? What do you want? What's the worst thing that I can do to you?

Perfect.

Her entire blog has inspired me once again. I was beginning to get annoyed with the usual questions (Where were you born? Where did you go to school? What are the names of your siblings? What are you afraid of?).

A better question -- the question of all questions: What's the worst thing I can do to you.

Muh-ha-ha! Liv and Mike better run for cover... I AM GOD (ducks and looks around for lightning bolts).

1 comment:

Charity Tahmaseb said...

Have fun, you two. I wish they’d let you use WIPs. And yeah, I know why they don’t, but really, I’m in the “don’t look back” mode with TBC, or at least, I’m trying to be. LOL I read on someone else’s blog that if you’ve written a novel, they’ll let you use a WIP, but I can’t find that anywhere.

Oh, well. I’ll just have to keep my eye your progress from a distance.

C.