It’s that time of the year again, as the Northern hemisphere slips into the burnt orange hues of autumn and the Southern hemisphere whips out its sparkly hot pants ready for spring, writers around the world receive their annual knicker-twitch. It’s time to dig deep, feel the burn, polish off the whiskey in brazen midnight flurries of word vomit and author tears. NaNoWriMo is back bitches. But how to prepare? NaNoWriMo is a towering Everest. A giant fire breathing dragon. How the hell does one write 50,000 words in a month anyway? Fear not young wordsmith, I am here to help. This is 6 ways to prepare for NaNoWriMo.

Way 1: Up the Ante with your Craft Learning

Hear ye, hear ye, there’s never been a better time to brush up your craft skills. We all know NaNoWriMo is fueled by the food poisoning of writing. It’s a race to see who can purge their author-guts the fastest and get as many words down as possible. There’s no time to stop and edit, no time to polish. So then, it makes sense to brush up before you start NaNo, to ensure your craft —even when you’re churning out the words—is as good as it can be.

I have the perfect polisher for you.

I’ve just launched The Anatomy of Prose The Senses course. The first in an on going series of craft courses designed to help you write better stories, characters and descriptions.

What will you learn?

• You’ll discover the pillars of all good sensory writing and how to implement them in your own work.
• You’ll learn the psychology behind sensory descriptions, how to use psychology to your advantage and the impact it has on the reader.
• You’ll receive a detailed breakdown of how to create rich descriptions for each individual sense.
• You’ll learn when you should and shouldn’t use each sense.
• You’ll get a raft of tools, tips, tricks and techniques to help you improve all five senses.
• You’ll identify why published examples of sensory description work and how to use the same techniques in your own work.
• You’ll understand the mistakes many writers make with the senses and how to fix them.
• You’ll receive course exercises to put lessons into practice.

Find out more about The Senses course

Way 2: Sprint Those Words, Baby!

NaNoWriMo Bootcamp hosted by Daniel Willcocks is a team effort. Don’t be alone this NaNoWriMo. Work in a virtual office with other fellow NaNoers. Together you’ll set the timer, sprint till your fingers bleed and then go at it all over again. NaNoWriMo Bootcamp is a twice-weekly gathering of fired-up writers all with one singular goal: to SMASH 50,000 words in 30 days.

Guided by international bestselling author, Daniel Willcocks, this 30-day Boot Camp guarantees to hold your feet to the fire and get that book written in time for NaNoWriMo—at least the first draft, anyway.

Join NaNoWriMo Bootcamp

Way 3: Connect with NaNo Buddies

No one will deny that doing NaNoWriMo is fifty shades of brutal. It’s one thing to write a book, but to write it in 30 days is quite the feat. Support is vital if you want to reach the finish line. Having friends, fellow writers and NaNoers to help you celebrate and push you on during those tricky days can be the difference between hitting 5 words and 50,000 words.

Ask your friends to connect with you, to “buddy” up and invite them to join you on the NaNoWriMo website.

You can find my profile here.

Way 4: Top up Your Craft Book Collection

Kevin J Anderson has curated an ENORMOUS bundle of craft, marketing and business books. In fact, this StoryBundle has a whopping 17 books in it and a course worth $150.

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• The 5 Day Novel by Scott King
• Stop Worrying; Start Writing by Sarah Painter
• The Well-Presented Manuscript by Mike Reeves-McMillan
• Simply Synopsis by Michelle Somers
• Business for Breakfast Vol. 13: NaNoWriMo for the Rest of Us by Leah Cutter

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $20, you get all five of the regular books, plus ELEVEN more books and a $150 video class!

• WMG Publishing Presents: How Can Your Business Survive the Downturn? by Dean Wesley Smith
• Turning Setbacks into Opportunity by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Essoe’s Guides to Writing Action Sequences and Sex Scenes by Joshua Essoe (two books in one!)
• Audio for Authors by Joanna Penn
• The In(s) and Out(s) of Series and Story Guides by C. Michelle Jefferies
• Mastering Amazon Descriptions by Brian D. Meeks
• Writing Better Fiction by Brent Nichols
• Killer Subject Lines by Andrea Pearson
• 13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains by Sacha Black
• 10 Steps to Hero: How to Craft a Kickass Protagonist by Sacha Black
• The Nifty 15 by Honorée Corder and Brian D. Meeks

Tell me more about the StoryBundle

If you only want one or two books, then here are four of the craft books that have had the biggest impact on my writing.

The Emotion Thesaurus and The Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi 

These thesauri are exceptional. They give you ideas and suggestions for how to show rather than tell emotions. Ways to connect theme to your hero’s wounds and flaws. Methods of digging deeper and looking at body language and long term effects of sustained emotions. They are truly phenomenal.

Get the Emotion Thesaurus at: Kobo, Apple, Amazon UK, Amazon USA

Get the Wound Thesaurus at: Kobo, Apple, Amazon UK, Amazon USA

The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass

This book changed the way I look at emotion in fiction. The thesauri are fantastic for showing emotion, but this book took my emotional writing to a deeper level. It gave me insight into humanity’s relationship with emotions and how to push characterization to a deeper level using emotion.

Get the Emotional Craft of Fiction at: Kobo, Apple, Amazon UK, Amazon USA

The Anatomy of Prose by Sacha Black

This book I wrote, but the learnings inside changed the way I write forever. The book focuses on sentence level craft, giving you a raft of tips and tricks to help you improve your descriptions, dialogue, characterization and more. If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create perfect prose, then you’ll love this book.

Click here to read The Anatomy of Prose

Way 5: For the Outliners

Look, I know everyone gets stroppy over the great plot-pants debate. But guys, it really doesn’t matter whether you plot, pants or stumble like a bumbling drunk through the weeds of your novel. What matters is that you get to the end. That said, I’ve got some useful tips for both camps.

For the outliners, I love Libbie Hawker’s method of outlining. If you don’t want to buy the book, then start with this cracking and mind-blowing episode of The Rebel Author podcast where I grill Libbie all about how to outline better.

She has some fantastic tips that help you outline more effectively. She also dishes out some tasty tricks to help those who, like me, get stuck part way through their outlines.

If you’re not an audio girl, then try reading K.M. Weiland’s 10-part blog series on outlining or her 12-part series on structuring your novel. She has some fantastic graphics and timelines that help you plot out that story to perfection.

Way 6: For the Writer Who Writes into the Dark

For those that don’t like to outline but trip off the high of “who the fuck knows” while they write, I recommend a couple of things. First up, there’s a great book I read by Dean Wesley Smith a few years ago called Write into The Dark. It gives you some home truths and some great tips for when you hit stumbling blocks.

Get Write into the Dark at: Kobo, Apple, Amazon UK, Amazon USA

Next, if you don’t fancy reading, then my biggest tip is to create an inspiration bucket. For example, I often create playlists to write to. You can find a playlist of music I wrote my first book, Keepers, to on Apple Music. The reason I did it is because sometimes having music can help jog your ideas. It helps keep you in the “mood” and mindset of your story.

Listen here

If you’re not into music, then how about making some aesthetics to remind you of the mood and feeling of your story? I use Canva and choose two colors I want to represent my story. Then I find images that best suit or match the feeling, atmosphere, locations and characters. I sometimes print them and hang them up or use them as phone or computer backgrounds and go back to them anytime I’m stuck.

The aesthetic on the left is from the novel I’m currently working on, The Scent of Death.

Please note, I do use affiliate links. This means that should you choose to purchase something based off my recommendations, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These things help feed my coffee addiction! Also note I only recommend things I personally use and love.

The post 6 Ways to Prepare for NaNoWriMo appeared first on Sacha Black.

I don’t think I am alone in obsessing over reading blogs about writing, but all it does it confuse me. I mean, how much attention do we really pay to understanding our own writing process?

Until recently, when I had an epiphany, I’d spent a long time thinking there was a right way… a right writing process I should be following. There isn’t. I decided to sit down and really give my process some thought, because if I can understand my own process, then I can shape it and tweak it to maximize my effectiveness. I hope this post helps you do the same.

Everyone’s process will of course be different, but if you are in any doubt about your own method, if you’re blocked or just feel something isn’t right, then I strongly recommend you do your own version of this to understand your process. Because I love visual things, I have depicted it in a pyramid:

 ***

Usually I prepare and organise till I’m blue in the face, lists run in my blood. But it wasn’t working for my writing, so I let go of doing most ‘preparation’ to write this novel. One thing I couldn’t let go of was an outline. I need it, for my sanity! For me, it doesn’t have to be massive, but because getting the timeline/action down is the most important thing in my first draft, I need a paragraph outlining each chapter. I never follow the outline to the letter, things get moved, cut completely and then changed again, but it’s a guide.

Step 1: Decide what you need before you start – an outline, a synopsis, masses of research or just an idea.

***

PLOT

This is where you figure out what is most important to you to get down on the page first. This will also be dependent on how you work out and develop your characters.

Step 2: Decide what’s most important to you in draft one.

Here are my questions to help you work out your own process for draft 1:

• What do you like doing first?
• How do you develop your characters? Do you know them before you start writing or do you see how they develop on the page?
• How well do you know your setting before you start?
• Do you need to do lots of research?

I tried to use character sheets and interview each one before I started, but it didn’t work for me and trying only made me tie myself in knots worrying I was a shit writer because I couldn’t answer the questions.

So I sacked the preparation off and let the characters develop on the page. For me draft one is all about timeline and action. I need to get the basic plot down on the page. There’s only a little bit of creativity and imagery woven in to the story at this stage. I can’t get everything perfect in the first draft, so I don’t even try. I don’t worry about the chapter, three chapters ago, that Ive decided needs a rewrite, I just keep going. But how do I combat this incessant need to edit?

Step 3: Create an editing map.

I create one place, with a designated section for each chapter. Dump decisions or notes about chapters or characters or whatever you like under the appropriate chapter section. That way you keep your thoughts and decisions ready and organised for when you want to edit.

The benefit of an editing map is it will allow you to pattern spot your thinking. If you find you constantly put notes about characters then you know that’s what needs to go in the next draft. If you comment about setting then work on that next and so on.

***

CHARACTERS

Have a break before starting draft two, the longer the text the longer the break should be, but its up to you to decide how long is right for you. I imagine I will put my manuscript down for a month or two – or as long as I physically can.

Here’s where I hack the manuscript or story to pieces, I focus on finalising the timeline. Moving chapters or scenes till they are right, but I get it right here. Once this draft is over I don’t want to have to move the timeline much more. Whilst I do this, I study the characters. Picking up on their salient traits, emphasising or minimising them, checking consistencies and making very rough notes about each one, so that I get consistency across the whole story – bit like an editing map but for the characters – let’s call it a character map.

Step 4: Check your editing map for patterns of your thinking before you start editing- whatever is most salient is what you should work on next.

Step 5: Create a character map – it can look like whatever you want, and be as big or small as you want but should have relevant or key bits of information about your character to ensure consistency when editing.

Step 6: Once the timeline is finalised plot a loose map of chapters / scenes so you can easily find bits you need when editing.    

The character map ensures I check their back story and history and start weaving in detail.

Finally I start thinking about the world and environment. I know a lot of detail about my stories world before I start writing, so I don’t need to do much work to create it, more weave the detail in, in draft 3.

***

WORLD-BUILDING

Have another break before starting draft 3.

This is world-building time. I know for some people this will be the first draft stuff. But not for me, world-building comes in as a finishing touch – madness given the genre I write (fantasy/dystopian), but my world building is really done before I outline. The world in my current novel is what came to me first, so even though I only start to weave the detail in now, I already know what needs doing. My other focus in this draft is to finalise characters, detail, backstory and ensuring all the foreshadowing is in the right place.

Step 7: Check your editing map again

Ask yourself:

• What’s left to perfect?
• Have you checked details?
• Is your world complete?
• Are your characters perfected?
• Do you need to foreshadow?
• Does your timeline work?

***

PERFECTING THE MANUSCRIPT

I’m rubbish at proof reading. But I have to at least attempt it before giving it to beta readers and editors. So I proof read, check everything, over and over till I feel like I have done as much as I can do. I check:

• Characters
• Timelines
• Consistencies of: characters, world, locations, storyline, descriptions etc
• Grammar/spelling/word order/sentence structure etc
• General errors
• Story arcs / character growth

***

BETA FEEDBACK

This is the bit where you crap your pants a little – your hand shakes as you tentatively give your manuscript over to be critiqued by beta readers.

Once you stop crying! You edit in your feedback and hey presto you’re ready to pay a developmental or copy editor or seek an agent or whatever you feel your next steps should be.

 ***

RESEARCH

Step8: Research along the way, don’t get stuck making all the decisions before you start

There’s one section I haven’t mentioned. Research, and that’s because I research constantly. From before I pick up the pen, right through to the end of draft 3. I don’t worry about having all the tiny details before I start, or I would never start, plus I change my mind too often to decide everything before I begin; so I research details along the way.

***

This post is not meant to be a guide to the only writing process– the complete opposite in fact. This post is just my personal method of writing, my process. It will only be right for me. But what I hope it does do, is help you get some insight into discovering your own process. 

What does your pyramid look like?

The post 8 Steps to Discover Your Perfect Writing Process appeared first on Sacha Black.