In case you missed it, this is the second part in a series about my journey through NaNoWriMo 2023; you can find the first part here.
In this post I dissect my process around planning and goals for the month of November, attempting writing sprints for the first time, outlining as a self-proclaimed pantser, and my approach to character development.
The Heart Breathings Journal
As I was working through Preptober I started searching YouTube for anyone else either currently preparing for NaNo ‘23, or who had participated in NaNo in the past. While I do casually watch a few “Author-tube” creators, I stumbled upon a handful of others that I began watching and continued to watch throughout November (thanks, YouTube suggestions).
One of the authors I stumbled upon was Sarra Cannon. Around October 1st, Sarra released her version of her yearly NaNo journal, which is a free digital planner for both Preptober and NaNo. I had a local office supply store print a copy of the planner and put it in a binder - I still carry it with me even though NaNo is several days ended. I won’t go through the whole layout, you can find Sarra’s dissection of the resource here, but I will refer to my ‘NaNo journal’ throughout these articles, so now you know what the heck I’m talking about.
I attribute a good portion of my success this NaNo to Sarra’s method of planning, specifically the portion where you decide days off, bake in ‘buffer’ days, determine your daily goal, and plan “double down days” (days where you attempt to hit double your daily goal). I followed Sarra’s example in the video linked above, ending up with 25 writing days equating to 2,000 words per day. I planned three days off from writing with 2 buffer days - though I ended up writing every day until hitting 50k, only taking off about one day before the end.
I actually attempted NaNo once before, when I was a far, far younger, more naïve (and less cynical) man. I don’t remember much of that attempt other than that I tried hitting the 1,667 every day without fail (as an inexperienced writer) and fell behind schedule very quickly.
Setting a 2,000/day goal for NaNo ‘23 was instrumental in: 1) keeping me ahead of the game consistently, and 2) giving me a dedicated goal every day. Eventually, I would feel uncomfortable if I missed my goal after many days of hitting it in a row - something I’ll talk more about in a future post.
Writing Sprints
I’ve never been a sprinter when it comes to writing. I’m a ‘write whatever for however long I feel like’ type of writer. That said, the Heart Breathings journal, along with others in the author-tube community, promote writing sprints. Though I support the idea of the Pomodoro Technique, it isn’t something I practice. Since some of the initial planning in the journal was related to sprints, I decided to try sprinting various lengths, on random ideas, on different occasions to determine what felt best for me. Here are a few details on my sprint sets:
Set 1 (15 min sprints, 5 min breaks, 7 a.m.)
Sprint 1: 585 words
Sprint 2: 555 words
Sprint 3: 506 words
Total: 1646 words
How did it go? Writing felt all right, rushed but with the idea in mind it came out relatively quickly, even though the quality didn’t feel as great.
Set 2 (25 min sprints, 10 min breaks, late-morning)
Sprint 1: 790 words
Sprint 2: 706 words
Total: 1496 words
How did it go? Writing felt tough; really pushed through on this one, possibly because I didn’t have much of a plan. Had a hard time figuring out where the characters and story were going. Words came slower than last time and I spent time re-writing words or brainstorming what happens next.
Set 3 (20 min sprint, 5 min break, mid-morning)
Sprint 1: 684 words
Sprint 2: 570 words
Sprint 3: 696 words
Total: 1950 words
How did it go? Felt like it went well; even without much direction the scene seemed to flow well. 20 minutes feels like a good sprinting amount because it’s long enough where it feels like I can have moments to think without feeling rushed, but also long enough that it feels like I’m just about ready for a break when the timer sounds (especially as the sprints progress). 5 minute breaks seem a little short so I might need to play with 8-10 minute breaks.
In the end, sprints didn’t feel right for me. I wrote the entirety of November without them. I understand them, I envy those who use them, but they aren’t for me (for now…). They did teach me that I could write mindlessly, putting the words and thoughts onto the page as they were digitally vomited by my brain and fingers. Some writers promote the opinion that sprinting - near-word-vomit - is the “only” way you’ll hit 50k in a month. It’s not, you can do it without sprints, you can do it your way, that’s the beauty of being a writer - no one writes exactly like you do.
Flying By The Seat of My Outline
I’ve always believed I’m a pantser (see here if you aren’t familiar with Plotter/Pantser). Outlines? Who wants to write the whole story breakdown and then still have the actual writing to do? Not me; forget it, bub.
Or, so I thought - then Preptober happened.
I had a whole month to prepare for NaNoWriMo and one thing scared me into starting an outline: the fear of not having enough story to write (I shall dub it ‘Lacktaplotaphobia’). Sure, I’ve pants'ed a short story or two in my day, but I wanted to go into NaNo knowing the connective tissue of my story. I knew the meaty signpost chunks that I would lead to, but how would I get there? I didn’t want to waste precious time having to do that awful practice: thinking.
Damn, I need an outline…
Looking back on it, the outline became most useful for brainstorming characters, worldbuilding, and plot. However, the plot portion quickly became outdated, and the characters grew as I wrote - leaving the worldbuilding to be the section that stayed mostly relevant. If I were taking more time I’d likely make it a living document that is updated as the story goes on.
One fun note: I actually started with an outline provided by another author-tube creator, but found the overwhelming amount of plot point questions and guiding text stifled the flow of ideas - thus making the outline more difficult to create. I tossed it in the virtual trash.
When November rolled around, I estimate I had about 2/3 of the plot outlined, which sounds a lot more awful than it is. I had Act 1 complete, and the rough outline for all of Act 2, but Act 3 was (and still is) largely incomplete. Luckily, my 50,000 words landed somewhere right in the transition out of Act 2 or I would have been pantsing past that point.
Character Roles & Portraits
I’ve always liked the idea of character archetypes in adventuring parties. My short story The Obsidian Mirror contains a party of adventurers in a Dungeons & Dragons-esque formation and I really enjoyed writing the interactions between them (as well as subverting expectations, both for the reader and for the characters). Going into Wildwood I knew I would have a cast of characters journeying together, but because I was approaching the story from a psychological approach to horror - as opposed to the class-based fantasy approach in ‘Mirror’ - I had to figure out a way to generate “new” archetypes (or, at least, implement known archetypes in a way that fit the story).
At that time I was learning more about the term ‘foil’ as it pertains to fiction: “a character who contrasts with another character, typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist” [via Wiki]. Wildwood’s party contained the primary protagonist and a sadistic antagonist, so I created what I called the ‘Character Wheel’ - a pie-chart-like scribbling where I would place each character based on their alignment (“good” on top, “bad” on bottom), their foil (aka, who are they the opposite of - who should they get along with the least), and their relationships.
What worked so well with the character wheel was the way I could plot relationships between characters. For example, I could write a relationship between closely positioned characters with opposite alignments, and see how that affected the others.
I created a basic template for each character that gave me a better idea of what traits the archetype held before they had names or faces. The template included the following:
Positive Traits - The “good” things about this character (strengths).
Negative Traits - The “bad” things about this character (flaws).
Background - A basic overview of who they are and what their life was like before the events of the story.
Arc - A high-level overview of their plot points and how they change over time.
Psychological effect - Related to the type of horror that happens to them; strongly related to their traits and background (aka, what’s their biggest trauma?).
Magic effects - Related to the magic system, what “power” they have.
Somewhere on the internet I came across someone who suggested ‘writing 3 positive traits for every 1 negative trait’ (I swear it was a YouTube video but now I can’t find it). I followed this advice for my “good” characters, and reversed it for my “bad” characters (3 flaws with 1 strength).
One of my best decisions with characters was to find reference photos of actors from various movie productions that fit with my mental image of the archetype. For a couple of them I knew which actor/production I wanted to find, but most of them were just searching until I found a photo that was just right. Interestingly, I found that it was the photo that had to fit, and not the actor/production/character/etc. For example, you’ll see below that a photo of Zendaya in Euphoria portraying Rue fit for one character - but other photos of Zendaya or Rue didn’t.
The Blank Page
I created both my Wildwood outline document and my Wildwood draft document within minutes of each other in early October. While the outline was continuously edited throughout Preptober, the draft document was left blank until November 1, the only adjustment being to the font selection (I always write in Times New Roman, 12 pt.).
There were no words in that document for almost an entire month.
I’m a Microsoft Word guy, a real ‘back-to-basics’ sort it seems when it comes to writing. While others are worldbuilding in fancy online software, or plugging away at digital corkboards in Scrivener, I’m staring at a plain MS Word page. I use Word in conjunction with One Drive to give me access to my writing wherever I go (that has internet) and on whatever computer I want. This isn’t an ad for Microsoft Office, but just an explanation of my setup and proof, should anyone need it, that a novel/outline can be written in standard word processing software (and Rome can be built with popsicle sticks and glue-sticks, right?).
It’s really nerdy, but you wouldn’t believe how many times I would open that document to stare longingly at that first blank page, or to double check, just once more, that it was setup and ready for my first day of NaNoWriMo.
It was like a gift I couldn’t open - a tasty meal or desert I had to wait to consume. And that made me incredibly excited for the first day of November.
In the next post, November begins! If you haven’t already subscribed, I’d highly encourage it - you get fresh new content delivered right to your inbox. You can subscribe here. Continue reading here: