NaNo Story Construction
29th of October? Nano starting in mere days? Perfect time to figure out how I’m going to go about this thing then, isn’t it?
1. Pick 30 random prompts and write something for each over the month – ideally write for one prompt per day, with a minimum of 2,500 words per prompt.
2. 60 random prompts – 2 prompts per day, 1,250 words per prompt.
3. 15 random prompts – 1 prompt for every two days, 5,000 words per prompt.
4. 75 prompts – 1,000 words per prompt.
(All these prompts would be one or two words, short phrases or perhaps one or two lines of a song. And all those numbers are dependent on writing entirely original fiction – as I mentioned in my last post, I might do half original fiction and half fan-fiction if I am short on inspiration.)
5. Spend some time going through the Adoption Society forum over on the Nano site, picking up characters, names and maybe even a plot.
6. Attempt to come up with an amazing original idea by Tuesday (unlikely).
Great idea! I also have found random generators helpful when needing names or ideas quickly. I write fantasy and sometimes it is helpful to have a constant list of random names for such things as characters, places, or even clothing generated for me. If I don’t like any of the selections, I just generate a new list over and over again until something strikes me as PERFECT, or I make it my own with a little tweek. It helps when I don’t want to write a big bold “XXX” in place of a name because I don’t want to break the flow of what I’m trying to write.
I like the site http://www.seventhsanctum.com but again, this is for fantasy or science fiction. I’m sure there are other random generators for other styles of fiction.
I really enjoy writing science fiction (big Star Trek/Firefly/Futurama fan), and that website you linked to looks really interesting, thank you! I might search out some for other genres seeing as I haven’t decided what I’m writing this year (although I do now have ‘Library’ and four names written in my notebook) and in the past I have had issues with not having a list of random character names ready – there have been several incidental characters called Fred Smith in past Nano Novels!
Seventh Sanctum is in fact pretty cool. I already have my story outlined and now I’m just sort of chomping at the bit to go! Wah. So much excitement!
Do you start writing at midnight, or wait until the morning? I usually start writing at midnight and try and get a thousand or so words out before bed.