5 Tips for Your NaNoWriMo Outline

305/365 - NaNoWriMo! by haley-elise

Does your NaNoWriMo outline need a little spit shine? Like your basic story but don't know if it's any good?

Piggy-backing off last year's NaNoWriMo outlining workshop, I've got a few more techniques I've accumulated to help hammer your outline into shape and give it a bit of a spit-shine.

The following tips will help you identify your main conflict, work tension and conflict into each scene, make sure your scenes flow logically toward the ending, and move your story from hook to resolution.

If you haven't taken a look at my NaNoWriMo Outlining Workshop, it might be a useful reference for the application of these techniques.

Part I - Part II - Part III

1. WRITE A 35 WORD PITCH

The third, and Adryn's favorite (and by favorite, I mean she hates me for making her do this), is to boil the conflict down to 35 words. You might remember when I described how I wrote a 35-word pitch for The Mark of Flight, which has really helped me in my quest toward publication. (More on pitches)

A pitch this short will force you to think critically about the central conflict. You can use the pitch to keep your plot from sprawling in unnecessary directions (if you tend to sprawl, like I do) and to identify whether your story has core plot-issues. Can't pitch it? That's an indication that the story's basic framework might need more work.

If, like Adryn, you have no idea where to begin boiling down the conflict, start by summarizing who your protagonist is and what they want in 35 words. Then summarize who your antagonist is and what they want in 35 words (hint: it better be something that chucks a horny, sparkly vampire in the Bed, Bath & Beyond display room of your protagonist's goal.)

Now take your protagonist and describe what she wants and how the antagonist is preventing her achieving that (of course, in 35 words).

Yeah, this is time-consuming, but it will likely save you a ton of time in revisions and give you a great framework for your query pitches!

Yes? No! image by Laura Appleyard

2. YES, BUT... / NO, AND...

Conflict in your scene uninteresting? On a recent episode of the Writing Excuses Podcast, Mary Robinette Kowal described a technique for making sure your scenes are exciting. It was intended for pantsers rather than plotters, but I think the technique is a fantastic way to make sure you're giving your scene enough conflict and tension.

Simply, get your characters into a pickle. Then ask the question, do they succeed in getting out of the situation?

If you answer YES, you must then come up with a complication.
YES, Bilbo rescues the dwarves from the Mirkwood prisons, BUT they nearly drown in the barrels.

If you answer NO, you toss in a little extra complication to really put pressure on your characters.
NO, Katniss's friends and family are not spared at reaping day AND it's her little sister who's been chosen to fight (and probably die) in The Hunger Games.

3. BUT / THEREFORE

You've note-carded and chased every plot-bunny down their respective rabbit holes, but do your scenes flow one-to-the-next in a logical, domino-effect that leads you from inciting action to inevitable conclusion?

Carrie Ryan, Magical Words blogger and author of the creeptastically beautiful Forest of Hands and Teeth, describes a technique she learned from an editor.

"If you line up every scene or plot beat in your book, and the only words that connect them are “and then,” you have a problem; instead, each scene needs to be connected with either ”therefore” or “but.”

 I'm doing this with my outline for Beggar's Twin, and it's really coming in handy. It's a bit complicated with multiple perspectives, but I'm literally setting up my notecards into the different perspectives and making sure they flow both along their individual storylines and toward the conclusion. I've found it super-helpful in identifying scenes that aren't working.


4. SEVEN-POINT STORY STRUCTURE

The fourth is the 7-Point Story Structure from Dan Wells--seven points that help you move your story from hook to resolution, which you can watch in five parts on YouTube:



According to the Writing Excuses show notes, the seven points are:

• Hook
• Plot Turn I
• Pinch I
• Midpoint
• Plot Turn II
• Pinch II
• Resolution

If you don't want to take the time to watch the YouTube video, you can also hear the cast of Writing Excuses discuss these seven points HERE.

Similar to this: The Hollywood Formula; The Three-Act Structure; The Secrets of Story Structure

5. TORTURE YOUR FRIENDS

Put down the scalpel.

Once you're finished making sure your conflict is solid, your scenes have tension, your plot chugs nicely toward the resolution, and you're hitting all the points of basic story structure, it's time to type it all up and present the outline to a friend, preferably another artistic type.

Generally, I find other writers or artists understand how to look at an embryonic story idea and help it grow. You don't want someone to give you unnecessary criticism and kill the excitement.

Don't know any other writers IRL? A great resource for other writers is the NaNoWriMo forums! Find someone to swap outlines with. And hey, if you're noticing some familiar problems, point them in the direction of whichever resource was most helpful. I don't mean my blog, though that would be awesome; I mean the primary source. If you think they'd benefit from But / Therefore, send them to Carrie's post on Magical Words.

Happy writing, and remember to eat occasionally!

Writing Romance - What About MY Needs!?

Writing Podcasts seem to have a certain synchronicity for me--when I'm struggling with something in my own writing, I hear it discussed in a podcast soon thereafter. It's not even that I seek out the episodes so much as I work my way though them, and the episode I need just happens to be there. That's happened to me with all three of my favorite writing podcasts: The Dead Robots Society, I Should Be Writing, and Writing Excuses. That's what I hope my own podcast, Pendragon Variety, can do for other aspiring writers.

 The other day, I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast, and heard something that seemed like common sense, but which I sometimes lose track of when writing romance between two characters. I'm not talking about romance novels (not that there's anything wrong with them). I'm talking about every romance you write, and what keeps it from feeling forced--what draws your characters to each other, by proxy drawing your readers to the relationship: knowing the needs the two characters satisfy for each other.

 In "The Mark of Flight", Shiro and Arianna were pretty simple to figure out. Shiro fills Arianna's need to be seen, appreciated, and loved for who she is and not because she's a princess. Arianna fills Shiro's need to be believed in, and his need to be valued as a person. Funny enough, they satisfy a very similar needs for each other, though they come from completely different backgrounds. Their romance was never really an issue for me, so when I started writing HELLHOUND, I imagined everything would fall perfectly into place.

 Not so. Part of this was my fault in writing without any idea who my characters were, what motivated them, or what they even wanted. But I feel like I should have figured it out by the end of the first draft. Something wasn't quite working--it was totally unbalanced. They went from 0 to 40...then back to 10...then to 80...and then piddled along to the end. It's not because they're not both likable, interesting, developed characters. It's not because there wasn't plenty of attraction on both sides.

I knew that Jaesung was a good influence on Helena...but I couldn't quite figure out what it was about HER that made him stick around. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when I say that, sometimes, I don't think one protagonist quite has as much to offer as the other. "Because he loves her" might be valid, but sometimes I still want a little more.

What does Bella have to offer Edward (besides the feeling that he's a horrible monster for wanting to eat her all the time)?

What does Ron give to Hermione (besides at least three reasons to cry in every book)?

What is it about Clary that makes Jace willing to brave even the possibility of incest for her? (*squick*)

 Jaesung gives me that problem. When you're a 23-year-old grad student juggling lots of goslings, what's going to draw you to a girl whose most likely background is "drug mule in witness protection"? Okay. Her hot legs. At first. But when shit starts going down, there's got to be something more.

Helena tries to do everything herself. She truly believes she has something that only she can do, and that she's got to do it alone. Unfortunately, her character flaw is in her inability to look past the moment and see consequences. Because she's too afraid to think about a future she thinks is hopeless, she gets herself into a lot of trouble for making decisions that don't seem to have any foresight.

Jaesung, on the other hand, has effectively killed his ability to live in the moment by always thinking about the past, and trying to figure out how to avoid making the same mistakes as his father. He works hard at something at which he's rather mediocre to make sure he can support his mother and his future family, while relegating his passions into the "hobby" box. Of course, he enjoys them...but he's not the type of person who can let himself disappoint people.

Helena never thinks about the future. Jaesung always does. This causes tension in their relationship, to be sure, but it also gives each of them something to contribute to the other. In a way, their flaws when it comes to life in general become their strengths for each other. Helena's lack of foresight gives Jaesung the opportunity to help her find her "light at the end of the tunnel" (Oh hai, theme). Her recklessness forces him to admit what he truly cares about, whether that lets people down or not.

Because I think flaws are so important, I have to make sure they grow, but don't fix each other, because the story isn't about overcoming flaws. Like many good stories, it's about overcoming adversity despite a thousand things that are in the way, including those flaws. Helena will probably never be able to plan ahead the way Jaesung does, and I know he will always feel duty-bound to take care of everyone around him.

She'll drag him out to play in the snow at 4AM. He'll remember anniversaries. She'll remind him to take a break from doing taxes. He'll make sure they get done later. She'll hunt demons for the safety of the world. He'll make sure she doesn't do it alone.

Yeah. They're a good match.