Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Nanowrimo in progress

Well it is now day 10 for Nano and I just crossed the 10k mark. I've been behind the whole month so far, but not to bad. I wrote 5k on Sunday which helped. While I try to get in a few words here and there I generally like to have large chunks of time to just write. Sunday was wonderful, even with the push to make up some of the ground.

I had been dragging for awhile with the writing and once I figured things out I've had an easier (and more fun) time of it. I spent some time Saturday and Sunday morning thinking about my novel. I came to the realization that I needed to think about my characters' motives better. My novel started with more of a plot idea than a character and until I moved more towards the characters it was a struggle to write. I switched out some characters that were there for the sake of plot and added some characters with some things they want. Some of the new characters are plot related, but more so in the way that what they want conflicts with other character's wants/goals.

I also spent some time Sunday morning creating a flow chart of my major characters. Each character has their own square, then I connected them with arrows. The arrows I color coded to show if one character liked, disliked, or was more neutral about the other character. Some arrows I made double ended to show that both characters felt the same about each other. Others have single arrows, one in each direction with different colors. It really made me think about the various characters as I took each character in turn and though about how they felt about the other characters. Plus to the pairs where the characters feel differently about each other can make for some good conflict points in the novel. Aside from just the mutual dislike.

So, to those also participating in Nano how are you doing? Catching up, right on goal, worked in a nice cushion?
And for those not doing Nano, how's the current work in progress going?

4 comments:

Bluestocking said...

I'm way behind on my Nano project (~7k) but that's ok since I've been splitting my time on other WIPs. I think Nano is good for me to jump start a new project, even if I don't finish it within the month allotted.

Best of luck as you carry on!

Karen Jones Gowen said...

Good for you! Hooray! 10K words is awesome.

Anonymous said...

10k is good so you should be proud of your progress.

Your flow chart sounds interesting; I've never tried anything like that.

I'm not doing NaNo but am keeping the month in spirit by trying to write more. It's working and I have made progress on my novel.

Keep going, Claire!

Claire Goverts said...

Bluestocking - That's impressive working on other projects while doing Nano. Nano is nice for jump starting projects.

Karen - Thank you. I'm excited to have hit the 10k mark, behind or not.

Christine - Thanks, hitting the 10k mark was great. As I wrote about the flowchart I was hoping that I explained it clearly. I was originally planning on doing something similar with a novel I need to revise. Then I decided to wait to revise and just have fun writing this month.