The Quick-Start Guide: Outlining Your Book For NaNoWriMo

     Before I began the tips for NaNoWriMo I knew I would never be able to get in everything I wanted to say, even in five or six blog posts.

     So today a little project I've been working on is finally available, and it's Free!

The Quick-Start Guide: Outlining Your Book For NaNoWriMo

For Pantsers and Planners!

Learn how to quickly outline your novel for NaNoWriMo

Did you begin NaNo last year and never finished because you didn’t have a middle or end for your story? 

The Quick-Start Guide walks you through the process of outlining the major plot points of your story, giving you a plan to follow during the hardest days of the month.

Were you thinking about doing NaNo this year but are afraid it’s too late now? 

The Quick-Start Guide gives you an easy outline to follow and worksheets to help you brainstorm plot points, get to know your characters, and tips to help beat the Writer's Block haunting the last few weeks of NaNo.

Do you dislike the strict time limit and word-count of NaNoWriMo, but would like to outline a novel you could write at your own pace, no matter how intense the time limit? 

The Quick-Start Guide is not only for NaNo-ers but for anyone who would like to write a novel at their own pace. The tools listed here are not only useful when outlining for NaNoWriMo but no matter how quickly you're planning on writing.

What if you didn’t have to plan an‭ ‬entire book‭?

The Quick-Start Guide is Pantser friendly! It's suitable for Planners who like to plot every detail, but being a Pantser myself I wrote it especially for Pantser's, with lots of space to still be able write by the seat of your pants! I explain that the outline is a guideline and not a quick trip down the “You ruined my life!” road. 

Written primarily for late-deciders and newcomers to NaNoWriMo‭ ‬2015‭ ‬
The Quick-Start Guide to Outlining Your Book for NaNoWriMo makes it possible for you to plan your novel in one month or less. While there is loads more to creating meaningful stories than just the bare bones of structure,‭ ‬The Quick-Start Guide shows you how to use the story structure to serve as a guide while you write--helping both Pantsers and Planners to finish a novel in a month.

     

Bonus Features include:

Worksheets for

• Outlining your Plot Points 
• Writing a story synopsis
• Character creating worksheets

     NaNoWriMo helped me do something I’d never been able to do on my own, and it helped me believe that I COULD write a novel. That’s why I’m a huge advocate for this motivational month of writing!

The Quick-Start Guide to Outlining Your Book for NaNoWriMo is available for FREE.

CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR COPY OF THE QUICK-START GUIDE

Do you have questions about
The Quick-Start Guide: Outlining Your Book For NaNoWriMo?
Ask away in the comment section below or send me a note in the contact  page.

Tips for NaNoWriMo: Outlining

     When it comes to planning a novel, I am not the happiest peach in the basket. 

     Usually, I get this absolutely spectacular idea for a story and after scribbling down the basics I start writing away, blissfully happy that I have no idea what's gonna happen next.

     You know what's wrong with this way of writing? Absolutely nothing. 

     This is way I write 335 days of the year. 

     Just not the 30 days of NaNoWriMo.

     

     I don't like myself during NaNo if I write like this.

     During NaNo a little planning goes a loooooooong way.

    Every year it seems I end up deciding too late what I'm going to write, and every year I end up with only half an outline. And every year I struggle with the last two weeks, last few thousand words. In December I'm this glorious mess of having written all tangled up with the--"It would have been so much easier if I'd just planned!" syndrome.

     So here's a quick run through of all the Plot Points you should outline before you start NaNo. And the sooner the better.

Inciting Event

Key Event

1st Plot Point

1st Pinch Point

Midpoint

2nd Pinch Point

Third Plot Point

Climax

Climatic Moment

Resolution

     Yeah, so what are all of these?

     These lovelies are where all the good bad stuff happens. Where things progress from bad to worse. Let me explain:

The Inciting Event
     This it the moment your protagonist gets the call to adventure or the first major event of the story. But don't take the word major literally. The Inciting Event can really just be one small tweak in the life of your main character, it is not a drastic change to her way of living. But ultimately, this one moment begins everything. It's the starting place where everything that comes after is a result of it.

For example: In Forever Young the Inciting Event is when Helen is hit by a car and is left in the hospital in a coma they are not sure she will ever come out of, or live through.

The Key Event/1st Plot Point
Sometimes separate, sometimes the same thing, sometimes one right after the other.
The Key Event is where it becomes clear your protagonist can no longer avoid the conflict, this is where it gets personal. The 1st Plot Point is where she recognizes this is where things have gotten so out of whack she can't NOT do something about it.

In Forever Young Daniel decides to be frozen in his friend's machine, and the 1st Plot Point would be when he is discovered by two boys fifty years later.


1st Pinch Point
Your antagonist should be well established by now, but this is where we get to see him or the central conflict show its control over your protagonist and the events of the story. Though a smaller disaster compared to the past and future Plot Points, this still raises the stakes. Meaning, the protagonist now has more to lose than before, and confirms the terror the antagonist or the conflict is spreading.

In Forever Young, it's definitely not a huge Pinch Point, but serves as a wonderful example none the less. Daniel is invited into the home of the two boys who tell him they found the machine in the middle of a junk yard. This is bad because earlier when we saw when Daniel was put to sleep in the machine he was safe with his friend. How did he end up here?


Midpoint
This is significantly bad moment for the protagonist. Where everything changes yet AGAIN. A very, very-very bad moment for him. And up until now everything your character has done has been just a reaction to the story events. This is where your character straightens up and says, "No more." Where they start, literally, taking things into their own hands.

Daniel is devastated when the Harry Finley he meets is not the friend who put him to sleep in the machine, Forever Young.


2nd Pinch Point
Another slight cracking of the knuckles of your antagonist and we see again just how nasty the forces against our protagonist are. But this time it's even worse. The 2nd Pinch Point has got to be another bad moment, greater even than the last pinch point.

While fixing a roof Daniel has an "age-attack" and nearly falls. This is greater than the last Pinch Point because it shows us now that Daniel is not going to be able to stay young, in Forever Young.


Third Plot Point
The beginning of the race to the Climax. Larger in scale than even the Midpoint. It's also the moment where maybe your protagonist is offered the chance to return to his old life. This is where the race begins and never stops until the Climatic Moment. Yet another awful moment for your character.

Daniel has another age attack and begins aging rapidly. The FBI and the military send out APBs for him. His very mortality is being threatened and we're not sure he'll survive.


The Climax
The big moment you've been waiting all NaNo to write! This is what launches the protagonist into the final confrontation with the antagonist or antagonistic force.

Daniel finds out Helen is still alive and with the help of the two boys, the military chasing them, he races to find her, Forever Young.

The Climatic Moment
The moment which ends it all. The deciding moment where the protagonist wins or fails.

Daniel finds Helen and is reunited with her, Forever Young.

The Resolution
The wrapping up of everything. All the subplots come to a close, and the protagonist either returns to his old life a changed person, or goes onto a new and different life, for better or worse.

Daniel proposes to Helen and they live happily ever after, Forever Young.

I'll be honest, outlining is a lot of thinking, a lot of hard work, a lot of scrapping and rewriting. But it's not as bad as you think. It's a lot of wonderful fun. And if you can plan what happens at each of these points, you'll be so far ahead in NaNo you'll be able to see the end before it's in sight!

Get your Free copy of The Quick-Start Guide:Outlining Your Book for NaNoWriMo

Helpful book: Structuring Your Novel, K.M. Weiland
Next week: surprise!

Writing a Story Synopsis (Tips for NaNoWriMo)

Picture: Unsplash

    There are essentially five things your synopsis needs. But first why do you need a synopsis for NaNoWriMo?

     My first writing teacher, Daniel Schwabauer, had a marvelous idea: Write a story synopsis and use it as a source of inspiration while you write.

     So I did. I pinned it up above my writing spot and I looked at it all NaNo long. And all NaNo long I had a reason to write that story.

    So here's what you need to write a story synopsis:

     The Protagonist - the hero of your story

     The Goal - your hero's goal and that of his friends united in a common purpose

     The Antagonist - the bad guy or source of conflict 

     What's at Stake - what does the hero risk losing?

     The Theme - at the end of the story how will your hero be different from what he was at the beginning?

     To begin putting it all together start with the Protagonist. What does he want? What are his dreams? Who is he? Has he failed at something and wishes to redeem himself? Begin by telling us who they are and what motivates them. (In The Magnificent Seven Chris is a gunfighter, and he's a loner out for hire with only himself to care for, until he meets up with the three Mexican men who want him help rid their village of Calvera. His motivation soon becomes helping these men save the lives of their innocent families.)

     Usually this will reveal, in some aspect, what the story goal will be. It doesn't always have to be exactly what the hero wants, but they are at least connected in some way. (The story goal in The Magnificent Seven is stopping Calvera.)

     Next, what's stopping them? Is it an evil villain with a tragic back story? A global disaster? In Pride&Prejudice there were several sources of conflict keeping the Bennet ladies from what they truly desire. For one, it is their lack of social status, connections, and wealth. For Jane, and for Lizzie, too, it's Bingley's sisters, at times Mr. Darcy himself, and in a way the sister's own family. So you see, conflict may come from any number of things. The world is your's when it comes to creating conflict!

     What does your protagonist stand to lose? If they take on this challenge, if they're willing to fight for what they truly desire, what could they possibly lose? If they don't triumph in the end what will happen to them? Their family? The world they live in? It's got to be pretty bad if the protagonist is going to risk it to defeat the antagonist or the central conflict to save it. Maybe not on a global scale, but a scale of 1 to 10 for the protagonist personally, it should be the 10. (The gunfighters in The Magnificent Seven are risking their very lives. In their eyes, that's what they are paid to do. But throughout the story the lives of the women and children and the honorable farming men come to mean much more to them.)

     The Theme, what's the overall conflict really about? What must your protagonist learn? How will they change? Chris, Vin and the others don't really have anything to learn, but it's obvious that there's more keeping them in the village than just the $20 apiece the farmers paid them. So it is a fight between good and evil? Hate versus love or forgiveness? Whatever it is, theme is one of the most important elements in a story and your protagonist needs to be different a different person by the end of the story.

    The next thing to do is to fit all these pieces of the puzzle together. 

     Start by summing up each of these elements into one sentence, more or less. 

     This makes it easy and pliable to put them together.

     Now combine them into a synopsis, joining all the elements up with a few appropriate, in-between words.

     Don't feel pressured to put them in any certain order. Once you have all of the elements feel free to get creative! Below is the synopsis I wrote for one of my NaNo novels. As you can see, I have What's at Stake in more than one place. Showing that there really isn't a specific spot for any element, but it also shows that What's at Stake needs to get worse throughout the story.

     

Deirbre Tuller(the protagonist) has dreamed of the day when her father will come to retrieve her from St. Margaret’s of Scotland School For Girls, when they can once again live together and be happy. But when the day comes, Coll Tuller is no where to be found. When her faithful guardian, Father Godfrey, makes the decision to send her to school to become a nun(what’s at stake), Deirbre becomes convinced her father would have come for her—if he could. She sets out on a journey to bridge the gap between them(the story goal).

But will she be able to find any shard of his existence midst the terrible bombings of England’s cities during WWII? Will she be able to elude Father Godfrey’s determined, ruthless measures to take her back? When questions arise about her father’s past with Father Godfrey, will she cling to hate or learn to forgive(the theme, what’s at stake)? Will her love for her father be strong enough to defy death? When she finally finds her father, will it give her strength enough to face what she discovers? 

     The biggest thing to remember while writing your synopsis is that it needs to be awesome. Not perfect awesome, but the kind of awesome that would make you want to write it. Something you look at to give you instant inspiration all through NaNo. It needs to be a synopsis you would dare NaNoWriMo and the frigid cold of November to write!

Recap:

1. What kind of story are you willing to take on a 50,000 word goal for?

2. Write the kind of the synopsis that makes your desire to write that story greater than your fear of failure.

Helpful blog post: What If: The Two Most Powerful Words in a Writer's Repertoire 

Next up: Outlining

The #1 Thing You Need to Do to Create an Awesome Character

Characters are the lifeblood of any story. Why?
Because people are our business. No matter who you are or where you are in life, people are what you're here for.  Not to mention humans are the most complex beings on earth.

For your character to resonate with other readers, they need to be human, they need to be complex. They need to not be boring. In fact they your readers need to be able to connect with them on deep and very personal levels.

So first and foremost, you, the writer, must know them to core. You need to find out who they are.

Take them through several rigorous interviews 
Question them, prod them, hit them where it hurts. Interrogate them like the bad cop from your favorite TV show. Find out everything you can about them.

• What are they most afraid of? 
• What was their worst nightmare ever?
• What are their dreams and aspirations?
• What do they want more than anything?
• How do they interact with other story people or in situations new to them?
• What's they're favorite song(contemporary or oldies)

Learn to love your characters deeply, and learn to love every bit of them, good or bad.

Take them through a Myers-Briggs personality test and brain type them.

Here's one my favorite character interviews from Proust.

If you know your characters from head to toe, inside out and up side down, you will be able to follow them through the rough patches of planning, or not planning, and writing.

My favorite example of a complex or dichotomous character is Ronan, from The Raven Boys. He's rude, he doesn't like anyone, he doesn't keep up his grades, and yet he still rescues a baby raven and loves on it and names it Chainsaw.

Or Tom Elder from The Sons of Katie Elder. He's this care-free, watch-me, I-don't-care, drifter,  always making bets, always trying to act like he doesn't care. But when his little brother is wounded in a gun battle, who is it constantly sitting by his side? Who is it that risks his life to stop the villain? Happy smile. Tom Elder makes me happy.

To know your character is to love your character.

Or to respect or hate, adore, laugh at, have funky conversations with, to insist incessantly upon their reality, to want to shoot them in the head. To slump onto your writing desk and weep bitter tears over.

     The more you know about your characters the more you'll be able to explore their souls in the pages of the story. The more you'll be able to bring them to light--the more your readers will love or hate them, too.

Key Characters to Interview
These are the five most important to any story, give or take the mentor and love interest. However, giving each of your minor characters(i.e. antagonist's henchmen or sidekick's nemesis) a goal or desire is a key element to making even them resonate with your readers.

• The Protagonist (the main character, the hero, the point of view character, Puck, The Scorpio Races)
• The Antagonist (the villain, the central force against your protagonist, Chief Elder, The Giver)
• Loyal sidekick (completely loyal to protagonist, shares the same goals, Russell, Up)
• The Mentor (supports protagonist, but also teaches him, Eddie Lowery, The Greatest Game Ever Played)
• The Love Interest (the protagonist's love interest, a motivating force in the story goal, Arwen, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy)

     Recap:
Shape and hone your characters, interrogate them, quiz them. What do they look like? Who are they really?

If you know who they are and what their deepest motivations are, the more real your characters will become on the page as you write them, and the more your readers will love them.