In early October, I decided to join NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, for my first time. Every fall, thousands of writers sign up for the challenge and wait for the literary equivalent of a starter’s pistol crack to echo across the globe: the midnight chimes ringing in November 1st.
The NaNoWriMo site is a non-profit agency dedicated to encouraging creativity within its writing community. With a small donation, they send you the official stickers and notepad as a welcoming package.
To “win” the challenge, each participant must write a 50,000-word novel in November. That’s roughly 1700 words every day, for thirty days. With the month now coming to an end and based on the word count criteria, I’ve failed the challenge miserably.
But for me, NaNoWriMo was an absolute success — the challenge exposed another measure of my capability.
Although I’ve successfully written a nonfiction book, which hits the store shelves on December 29th, this was my first attempt at writing a full-length novel. Sure, I wrote a science fiction adventure book when I was ten years old, but that was for an audience of one. My NaNoWriMo project was a novel I hoped would appeal to many. The problem was I had no idea how to write fiction.
Writing a nonfiction book felt easier. The storyline, setting and characters were defined. All I needed to do was translate the factual details into compelling sentences on the page. Fiction relies on the author’s imagination, and I was instantly overwhelmed as I tried to flesh out the main character’s profile and plot a potential storyline. I turned to Google for help and found the internet was rife with helpful templates and decision checklists. For example, one flowchart helped me decide on the novel’s point of view and tense. Then there were pages and pages of templates for character creation, sub-plot development, and scene card descriptions. The jargon was dizzying.
Instead, I cheated. I decided that my novel would mirror a real-life murder investigation that my mother and I were pulled into a few years ago. Suddenly, I had the cast of characters and a paranormal thriller plotline to build out with my imagination.
I thought about how I would pitch the book to my agent or publisher. How could I hook someone in fifteen seconds or less and make them want to read the book?
Back to Google. I found Gareth Powell’s insightful website filled with authorly advice, including a blog post on How to Write an Elevator Pitch.
I applied his formulae and came up with this:
As I sat down on November 1st to write my novel, I asked myself a simple question: what if ?
What if my psychic protagonist had a vision during the trial, which surfaced pivotal information the lawyer needed to cross-examine a crucial witness? What if the psychic, for whatever reason, was barred from reaching the courtroom in time?
The story engulfed me, and my fears and apprehension disappeared as a movie screen played in my mind’s eye. I saw the opening scene, frame by frame. Before I knew it, I had written the novel’s dramatic prologue, its sole purpose to throw the reader into the story and hook them into turning the page and continuing with Chapter One.
Occasionally I got stuck, especially when I tried to bend the story to align with what happened in the real-life murder case. Whenever I hit a stumbling block, I put the computer away, laid down on my bed and closed my eyes. A few deep breaths later, I tossed the scene I wanted to write around in my thoughts. As soon as I shrugged away the constraints of reality, my imagination took over. I grabbed my stack of index cards and jotted down any scene epiphany or idea that surfaced.
It’s now the last day of November, and the NaNoWriMo challenge is coming to an end. Although I’ve only managed to write a fraction of the 50,000 words, December is a new month.
Photo credits: personal photos of templates from Writers Online and Abbie Emmons; emoji: © Yael Weiss via Adobe Stock; What if: © MarekPhotoDesign.com via Adobe stock; index cards: © caimacanul via Adobe Stock.