The Write Life

Current total word count: 25,163 *Does a happy dance* Yay! I made it to the half way point!
Words written today so far: 3,583


Update:

So when I woke up this morning I was thinking about my novel and how it was going and I began to think back over my other Nanowrimo experiences and I thought back to the first year I participated (which was in 2007).  That first year was my best year.  I had been reminded of Nanowrimo the night before the event was going to start and decided I was going to participate.  The next day I started writing without a clue as to what I was going to write.  I wrote every day until the 24th of November when I reached 50,000 words and finished my story and I had written from the beginning of my story to the end. Ever since then writing in Nanowrimo has been a struggle for me.  I think I've put too much pressure on myself to have a year just like that one.  A lot of times during Nanowrimo I've given up.
I was thinking about the story I've been writing and when I first started my story I rushed through the beginning way too fast and left out so much that I was wanting to include plus my story has been acting like it wants to be in first person but I've been writing it in third person.  So I decided to start from the beginning again and write in first person and add in all of those things I left out.  I'm not completely rewriting though and my word count I've written so far still counts but I'm trying to add in more and explain my characters better.  Plus I've added some new characters that weren't there before.  I'm pretty excited about the decision and hopefully it will make writing my story a lot easier.

Figment:
So something I wanted to mention for those of you who may be interested...Is that I have had a figment account since the end of November last year and I've never used it so I decided to use it to upload my rough draft as I'm writing.  Click to go to my story.  I'm so nervous about putting up my story because I don't think any one will like it.  I really really enjoy writing but I have a hard time seeing myself as any good but hopefully you all will enjoy it?  I am thinking about putting my very first Nanowrimo novel up there too (which is still a rough draft > < )
Oh and as a side note for TracyMichelle210, I came across your novel that you wrote in June and started reading it and I LOVE it! It's such a great idea for a story and I'm excited to continue reading it to find out what is going to happen.

Camp Nanowrimo Achievement Badges:
So I keep forgetting to mention this but some other Wrimos put together a list of achievement badges that you can earn while participating in Camp Nanowrimo.  And they put the list and descriptions of how to earn the badges into a blog.  I worked to earn some badges in June and I'm doing it again (and some you can earn for doing both camps).  It's a lot of fun for more motivation to write and also makes it more of a "camp" experience.  So you guys should definitely check it out! :)


Today's Task:
Set by: OneMoreSouthernBelle

The Task: This task is all about Chapters.  How do you decide to break up your chapters in your novel and how do you know when to end your chapters?  How long do you think a Chapter should be?  Do you think Chapter titles matter and how do you choose them?

My response:  For this novel I'm writing I've been jumping around so much that I haven't been able to think about breaking things into chapters so as of right now it doesn't have any chapters.

When OneMoreSouthernBelle asked the question "how do you know when to end your chapters?" I thought of something I read in a book by William Noble called "Conflict, Action & Suspense"
In one of the chapters he is talking about leaving your reader hanging and I think his advice answers the question "How do I end my chapters?" but I thought it was also a good way to know when to end them too?
Here is what he says, "...when we leave readers hanging, we are really leaving them in the midst of a conflict in the story, and that's exciting and entertaining.  But readers expect this...so our job is to feed this expectation, and we do it by moving the story forward to an exciting point...and stopping.  Think conflict, think dilemma, think surprise:
...he watched the little fiat's taillights blend with the Gross Platz traffic, and he turned away, knowing the plan was working.  But, then, suddenly, there was a screech, the crash of crumpling metal, and the lights of Gross Platz seemed to jump like a thousand cray eyes.
End of chapter, end of scene...we've left 'em hanging by not showing what or who was in the crash and by not pursuing the story line further.  The readers wonder, the readers are surprised, the readers may even guess what happens.  But the readers don't know!  And that's why they won't forget, and that's why they will stay interested and read on.  Curiosity, something unresolved, it's human to pursue it."

So as far as when to end your chapters...You should end them at a point that is exciting and that leaves the reader hanging so they will want to immediately go to the next chapter because they just have to know what is going to happen and then you do it again at the end of the next chapter, and the end of the next, and so on.  That way your book can be come a book that the reader can't put down.

As for chapter titles, when I read a book I really like it when the book has chapter titles just like when I am watching a tv series on dvd I love that each episode has a title because I like to read the titles to see what I have to look forward to and it gets me really excited to read the book or to watch the show.  So for how to choose what to name them, I would make the title kind of a little teaser for what is going to happen in that chapter, some thing that would make the reader say, wow I can't wait to read this chapter and find out what is going to happen.


I hope that this advice can help you out :)

If you're reading my blog and participating in Camp Nanowrimo I'd love to hear from you down in the comments and to hear how you are doing on your novel.

<3 Andrea

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.