 |
| Credit: Pixabay.com |
Last year for National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, I wrote
my first full novella. However, I didn’t finish the first draft
until sometime around the new year. I’m not sure if it will be much
different with the novella I’m writing this year. I haven’t been meeting the minimum goal
I originally set for myself which was 1,250 words a day. It shows
that I don’t have the attention span to write long works. However,
I compromised with myself saying that if I don’t feel I can make it
to 1,250 words a day, considering that my day job takes up most of my
time, then I’ll shoot for one page a day give or take a little. I
say “give or take a little” because the numbers of words vary
between pages in almost any kind of writing.
I’m also behind
because of procrastination. Or what I at first thought was
procrastination. I’m the kind of person who
likes to plan things when it comes to projects rather than just dive
in. Although I’m not a fan of
outlining the story before writing it, for longer works, such as
novellas, I like to write out a brief outline so I’ll have a rough
idea where to go with the story. If I don’t I may never get the
first draft finished. Besides making a story outline, I’ve lately
also been making a character outline before writing the actual story.
The character outline is basically a very brief character profile. I
learned how useful this can be at one of the writers panels I attended at WorldCon back in the summer.
When you think about
it, characters make the story. We as people automatically make
stories in our own daily lives. The decisions we make lead to
results, good or bad, and when put together those results turn into
stories. For example, Mike wakes up to his alarm clock to go to work.
But then he decides not to go because he’s tired of doing a routine
job. So he calls in “sick” and
goes to the movies instead. But one of the supervisors who happened
to have the day off sees Mike at the movie theatre and squeels on
him. Mike gets a phone call from his boss who says he’s fired. All
those decisions Mike made led to events and together they added up to
a story—a very simple, mundane story, but a story nevertheless.
I’ve discovered
over the years that, if I work the main character into the story as
I’m writing the rough draft it’s a hell of a lot harder for me to
go anywhere with it. And so I get a wave of writer’s block. That’s
because I don’t know the character and so don’t know what she
would do in given situations. So if you make a basic character
profile—a listing of qualities such as the person’s age, sex,
occupation, her number one interest or pass time, a few physical
traits, and of course her name—you have a better idea of how she
would react in a certain situation. So yes, part of my
“procrastination” was through creating the main character before
writing the actual story. But then again, like society makes history,
characters make stories. So someone has to be in the story to trigger
the events in order to make the story.
So when you write out your plan for your novel
or novella, whether that plan is a brief story outline or a brief
character profile, you can’t really be procrastinating because you
are writing even if you’re not writing the story itself. Do you plan your
main character before writing your story or do you write him or her
in as you are writing the rough draft? Feel free to leave your
answers in the box below.
Until next time . .
.
Comments
Post a Comment