Wednesday, October 28, 2009

WIP Wednesday


Soooo....are we all ready for NaNo? :D I am cautiously optimistic. I have a fairly good synopsis for my new book and an outline of sorts. It's more of a "This happens then this happens then this happens" type thing, but hopefully it will help give me an idea of what to write :) I'm sure the story will mutate at some point, as it always does, but at least I've got a starting point.

I'm curious to see how this will work for me. I've never tried outlining before, at all. My stories always turn into something completely different than what they started out as. In fact, my first two books both started out as sort of "coming of age" stories about a girl and a few of her relationships. Somehow, that storyline turned into a historical romance with a treasure hunt and a YA paranormal with gods and cool powers. Go figure :)

But, I've never had this much of an idea of where I wanted the story to go. It was always a general "I want the story to be about this." This time, I actually have the whole story mapped out. Not specifics necessarily. I don't have any of the chapters fully outlined with minute details. It's more of a "Chapter 1 - The MC meets character one at the bookstore - he follows her home" "chapter 2- flashback to how she got where she is - meets up with character 3"...That sort of thing. But it's much more defined than anything I've ever done before. I am actually really excited to see if this method works well for me :)

My current novel is just about done. I've done all the major revisions it needs (I think). My main group only has about 30 pages left to go through, and my second group has about half the book, but as they've only been finding minor things here and there (commas and dialogue tags that could go, etc), I'm pretty confident that this book (which finally has a title!!!) is ready to fly the coop :)

How is everyone else doing? Present projects making progress? NaNo novels prepared to go?

13 comments:

Stephanie McGee said...

Congrats on the edits and good luck with NaNo!

Wendy Love said...

I am doing NaNo for the first time. I hesitate to put aside my WIP for the entire month and know I will miss it. But I am looking at this like a little experiment, to just start writing from scratch and see what happens. Silly, but I don't even know what I am going to write yet!

Jamie D. said...

Sounds like you've got a good plan - best of luck, I'll look forward to hearing how you do. :-)

I've got my "scene outline", such as it is, a good idea, good characters, and as soon as I finish my current draft (tonight or tomorrow night), I'll be ready to go. Can't wait...I love NaNo...

Dolly said...

I have been experimenting with various outline methods, and I believe I have currently found one that might work. Unfortunately, I only started that yesterday, so I don't know if I will finish it in time for NaNO. But still, I hope to finish it to a basic level, and work on it while doing NaNo if necessary.

I have tried writing without outlining (several drafts) and now I certainly favour outlines. Without that I just find first drafts have far too many holes, and then I get demotivated about editing them.

Ina said...

Good luck with NaNo! That's awesome that you're almost done with your current project, that has got to feel good. Me? I'm flying solo this month and doing my own FiThiGoDaNoMo (aka "Finish This God Damn Novel Month") in the hopes that I will be able to start querying before the year is over.

Rebecca Knight said...

YAY!! I'm excited that you're almost ready to start querying :). Love the book so far!

mary.anne.gruen@gmail.com said...

Congrats on having a book almost finished and another ready to go.

I may try Nano next year if I can get further along with the book I'm writing now. The summer had too many house guests to make much headway.

Having an outline doesn't mean you have to follow it slavishly. It's just a framework to get you started.

Cindy R. Wilson said...

I know just what you're talking about. I don't really ever outline for my stories and I did for NaNo. Chapter by chapter as you did and what would happen in each of the scenes. I'm hoping it works for me and keeps me focused. Good luck!

Tere Kirkland said...

Hey, if you're afraid to call it outlining, just call those your scene and chapter goals. Funny how the waiting for November can turn pantsers into plotters!

In fact I blogged about this today, and just buddied you on NaNo!

Good luck! Maybe you'll find you like plotting!

Elana Johnson said...

I'm stagnating until NaNo. So I'm catching up on crits and clearing my writing time so I can, yanno, write on November 1!

Paul Greci said...

I'm going to be doing some minor editing before my YA novel goes out on submission.
I just finished a major rewrite on another novel and sent it to a critique partner so that leaves me with three choices--rewrites on one of two other WIPs, or to start something new. At this point at I haven't been zapped by the new-idea lightning that inspires first drafts so I'll probably work on one of the rewrites.

Tere Kirkland said...

Oops, I forgot the blog post I wrote about pantsers becoming plotters is for tomorrow. Today was a WiP Wednesday post. Sorry for the confusion.

Anonymous said...

Hello, Michelle. I have given you an award. :) Please look on my blog to accept the award: http://runawaymoments.blogspot.com/2009/10/award.html