OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Word Count: 11, 185 on thriller novel, codename “Project Morgan”
Here's my video from Day 5 NaNoWriMo… and there's text and links below the video!
More Lessons Learned:
- My writing really sucks but that's ok because brilliant author Mur Lafferty (who I interviewed yesterday) says it's ok! I'm also just focusing on getting stuff out of my head. It doesn't matter how it's written at the moment. No one will see this draft!
- I am writing very fast especially on the train. I use a little Netbook (Dell Mini 9) and don't even bother with punctuation. I just write what comes. I am leaving in the question marks and (follow this up later) comments and asides. I'll tidy it all up later. More thanks to Doyce Testerman who also wrote on this topic (warning: explicit but very funny!)
- It is a thriller so my kick-butt heroine is doing exciting things. When I realise that the characters are talking too much I throw some action in to move the plot forward. This is so much fun! Thanks to author J.C. Hutchins for his thriller tips (interview to be podcast next week!)
- Another helpful post this week was from Scott Westerfeld who talked about dialogue spine. I have used this technique between my 2 main characters, Morgan and Jacob. It has worked really well. Just talking, no filler “he said, she said” etc. Very useful for bare bones writing.
- I have also bought the URL for my novel name and also the main character– to be revealed at a later date! But for $10 you can make sure it is future proofed if you already have a title in mind. I use GoDaddy.com.
More videos and lessons learnt coming soon…… Let me know how your Work In Progress is doing!
Hi Jo I congratulations on taking the bull by the horns with regards to nanowrimo. I didn’t take the challenge as it takes me a year to write 50,000 words. I’m a slow author, but what your doing is great.
My editor says that more authors should write from the the head straight to the keyboard without worrying about spelling and punctuation errors. She says that’s her job to worry about that stuff. I’m lucky though I have an extremely supportive editor. Like you we also have registered the domain names for upcoming works. Interesting times ahead.
Kev