How to NaNoWriMo
by jespah

Heard of NaNoWriMo (November is National Novel-Writing Month) but don't know how to get started?

What's NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is an online/in person event all year but most activity is in November.
NaNo makes writing less isolating, with a festive/competitive atmosphere.

What are the rules?

Write 50,000 new words in November (the big event is in November but NaNo holds camps and other events all year). Words can be for one book or several. You don't need to write in English. All genres welcome including fanfiction.

You don't have to start on November 1st. But you must hit 50k words by 11:59 PM, your time, on November 30th. You don't need to finish, publish it, etc. There are no NaNo police. No one is looking over your shoulder; this is the honor system. But counting non-writing in your word count is silly. This violates the spirit of NaNo. You won't get as much out of it.

Of course you don't need NaNo to write. It's just fun. These instructions are for November but you can scale these for any time of the year!

Planning

No plan is generally a bad idea. You must write an average of 1,667 words per day. With planning, you meet word count faster. No plan means you spend time figuring out your idea. It isn't cheating to plan ahead! You can have a detailed outline.

Outlining

Use any way that works for you. Try:

• Radiating wheel
• Beat outline
• Longer outline
• Partial outline
• No outline

Radiating Wheel
Draw a circle in the center of a piece of paper. In the circle write MC (main character, or their name if there's one). Draw other circles; fill them with names or info. Draw lines connecting other circles to the MC. Along the lines, write how they relate. MC's love interest's line might say 'met at school'. Can't relate to the MC? Change the circle or the MC, or erase that extra circle.
Put those lines in a list. Don't try to get them to interrelate or put them in order. Think of more? Add it.
Get first ideas down however works for you.

Beat Outline
Order your list. Find plot holes and adjust. List items might be one chapter, less, or more. A beat is the one point you must make in a chapter. One beat might introduce a character; another might kill them off.
Characters à conflict à crisis à change
Develop characters (scene is one). MC interacts with someone.  Center plot on conflict, lead to crisis; end with change.

Beat/chapter descriptions are short, like:
• Crisis
• Resolve crisis
Change order if not working.

Longer Outline
Story bible: add info like names. Keep research, important URLs. Not set in concrete but helps if you run out of ideas.
Don't like big outlines? No problem!

Partial Outlining
Beats only is more flexible but can also mean more creative thinking during NaNo if outline is too sparse. But for standalone stories, full-blown outlines and story bibles can be overkill.

No Outline
You will use time in November creating story and world. Busy? Rethink this.

Get Organized

Going into NaNoWriMo with a mountain of other deadlines and tasks hanging over your head is a recipe for failure.

A few suggestions:

• Buy a separate flash drive just for NaNo;

• Make sure you have cloud space, too;

• If you need a new program (e. g. let's say you need to buy Word), do so before the month begins;

• Update your computer!

• If you do the cooking in your home, put up some frozen meals (homemade or store bought) and set yourself up for at least a few days here or there where you don't have to do more than minimal meal preparation;

• If you blog, set up some posts and use your blogging program (both WordPress and Blogger allow for this) to schedule the posts. Hence you might have a blog post set for the 5th and won't have to stop what you're writing in order to keep up with your blog;

• Take care of basic appointment stuff before, if you can. E. g. if you have kids, why not get them to the dentist in October, rather than November?
You don't need to do any of this, of course, but it will help you out when you're busy.

Practical Help

What font should you write in? How should you save your book? People ask these questions every single year.

• Font choice is really just important for publishing, both traditional and self-publishing. But most fan fiction can't be published. So – it doesn't matter;

• Save your work three separate ways: (1) on your hard drive; (2) in a flash drive; and (3) in the cloud. Every single year, someone loses their work. This happens when laptops die or a dog eats a flash drive or someone gets stuck elsewhere because of weather or the like (e. g. you went to your grandmother's and then there was a blizzard and you can't leave for a few days). You can also go with pen and paper if you are really stuck;

• Don't like to write on your phone? That's fine, but you can still use it for quick notes or observations. If you are stuck waiting for an appointment, and think of the perfect sentence, there's no reason you can't stick it in an email or text and send it to yourself;

• The best programs/methods are Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener, Open Office and Libre Office. Use Google Docs for collaborative work and for beta readers. If you have none of these (everyone can get to Google Docs with a Google account), then other word processor programs are acceptable second choices. Third choices are WordPad and Notepad. If you hand-write your work, it will eventually need to end up in an electronic format if you want to post it to Wattpad;

• You don't need a playlist. But if you want one, if you have a YouTube account or iTunes, why not create playlists that way?

• You don't need Scrivener to visualize characters. A free way to do this is with Pinterest. Create a private, secret pin board and then add the images you like to it.

• If you can't figure out what to write in the current chapter, but know what to write later, there's no reason you can't add a place marker and then come back to it later. So after you write Chapter 1, the next chapter you write might be Chapter 5. Just add asterisks or something else which doesn't look like a word. Then, when you can fill in the missing parts, do a search for the place marker.

• Use place markers when you don't know what to name a character. Then just find and replace once you've come up with that character's name.

The NaNoWriMo Site: https://nanowrimo.org/

How do I work this thing?
You don't need to join the NaNo site in order to write 50,000 words in November, or in any month. But it helps if you want the community. Plus – spoiler alert – there are a number of winner goodies if you make your goal.

The NaNoWriMo site works similarly to a lot of other sites in that it's a free signup. You can add as much or as little detail as you like. Adding writing buddies is fun but unnecessary; the same is true of joining a regional group or posting in the forums. You can also shop or donate. Neither is necessary, but they are kind of nice to do for a site which relies upon donations.

Here are two things you need to do on the site:

1) Create your novel. You don't need a cover, but it does help with visualizing your goal. If you don't have a title, just call it by the year and be done with it (e. g. '2017'). A teaser and an excerpt are nice but are not necessary. Because Google indexes the NaNo site, your teaser will end up searchable online.

2) Keep up with your word count and validate your novel. Don't know your word count? Don't worry; they'll count for you.

Published winner? Add to their list: http://nanowrimo.org/published-wrimos

WattNaNo is Wattpad's official ambassador-led profile to shepherd you through the madness. There are prompts and loads of encouragement. Not connected to the NaNoWriMo organization.

Writer's Block Rescues

Writer's block happens when you have stress or get tired. So get enough sleep. And this is yet another reason to outline. Not only do outlines give you vital clues as to what to write, they can also help to reduce your stress levels, and that makes it easier to write. But again, if outlining is just not for you, then so be it.

Shake things up. Get outside. People-watching helps; so can nature. Listen, observe, consider. Ask: "What if?"
Another thing you can do is, move on ahead. So what if you're missing Chapter 9? You can write it later. Remember: there are no NaNo police. Write in the order that works best for you.

Making it to 50K Words

How do you get to the elusive 50K?
Beyond outlines (or not), you still have to write. And you may have found you just don't have enough ideas. Or your story is close but it's just not making it. Here are a few ideas for what is, essentially, padding:

• Stop using contractions. Do not = 2 words. Don't = 1 word. Yes, I know it's small, but it's (excuse me, it is) something. Do not knock it!

• Add more description.

• Add more back story.

• Start the story earlier.

• Add a new character.

• Make the characters' challenges more difficult.

• Add physical issues which take time to develop and write, or more descriptive prose.

Once the month is over, you might want to take some of this out. And that's okay. Long as you make it to 50K by the end of the day on the 30th, it does not matter how much you slash away of the story during editing.

After NaNoWriMo

I'm done. I hit 50K. What now?

First things first – validate on the NaNo site!  Once you have hit 50,000 words, validate your work on the NaNo site. In 2016, you were able to do this by November 20th. Why validate early? Because delays mean, potentially, you try to validate and their server crashes. Validate and be done with it, even if you're still writing. You'll be glad that's done and, possibly, if you stress out less, you'll be less likely to suffer writer's block.

Second – celebrate! 50,000 words is a terrific achievement! Go and have some fun. You did a great thing.
Set it aside for a week or so, to create some distance. Do something other than novel writing. This is vital. Then edit! Check WattNaNo for more information. And don't forget to tell WattNaNo if your NaNo work ends up on Wattpad, so it can be considered for a reading list.

And finally, whether your work ends up on Wattpad or not, your next step is to do it all over again. Because it's fun. Because it's liberating. And because, with every word written, you will get better.
Now go knock 'em dead.

Does competitive writing get your creative juices flowing,  or does it add too much pressure?