You Know, I Might Just Be Ready In Time For NaNoWriMo – The Climb #614

Wednesday 28^th October 2020

This is how writing works. You bang your head long enough against any metaphorical wall, you’ll break it.

For the last few days I’ve been stuck on the plot of my NaNoWriMo novel this year. I’m using the event as a way to play with structure, specifically, whether planning heavily before writing leads to a better first draft. And that means, doing a LOT of prep work before I even start writing.

I’ve been struggling with plot, and specifically trying to create the simplest form of it, known as SPOOC. It’s my first time using this as part of my planning, but I used something very similar in my query letter that got me my agent, so I didn’t need convincing.

And it’s amazing, how, that condensed… the SPOOC shows up plot problems. It’s almost like, by putting it under that much pressure, it forces all the cracks to the appear.

What specifically unlocked it for me was a little bit of character back history. By filling in the character sheet, I had an idea how my protagonist got to where he was, and with it – most importantly – the emotional baggage he came with. I could therefore spin that out into knowing what the conflict was.

I ran the SPOOC past an author friend of mine, simply because this is my first time using this method for plotting and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overlooking anything obvious. He said it looked fine (So, if it ends up terrible, I’m blaming you, Cam!)

That moves me onto the next stage which is going back to Scrivener and filling out the chapter breakdowns.

I’ve already pre-populated them with some information. I’ve converted the storyclock across my 24+ 1 epilogue chapters, so I know when the major story beats need to appear. What’s interesting is that now I know the SPOOC, going in and filling out those story beats, proved REALLY easy!

Now, I get it, you might say: Adrian, you’ve been thinking about that story for days so it’s probably your subconscious having already worked out the story. Yeah, I wondered that as well, except that there’s a stage in the storyclock where the protagonist would reject the invitation to adventure and that’s not something I would have done.

BUT… by changing it so that the invitation is at first refused… guess what? It feels like the stakes are being raised. It feels a better story.

I’m fully prepared that planning the novel this way, may result in something that feels like a paint by numbers… but that’s the experiment. That’s why the story is something new, that’s why it’s less commercial, that’s why I’m doing it now.

I still have a bit of work filling out the outline. I need to come up with the interconnecting chapters, each with their own stakes. I need to add some sub plots that build the secondary characters. I need to link in theme. I need – unique to this story – decide on locations, as it plays a heavy role in what I’m trying to do with this story.

BUT, with just a few days to go before NaNoWriMo starts… it’s starting to feel like I’m on the downward stretch. Probably a few final curve balls to deal with, but I’m hopeful I can be ready in time.