One Week to Go

There's one week left to NaNoWriMo madness, so my prep work needs to wrap up soon.


Follow Shanna Germain's progress here at What the Moon Saw . If you have a NaNoWriMo blog or are blogging about it on your regular blog, send a link to me, please.

I decided to try the Snowflake method, which is the exact opposite of the way I usually write. I think I posted a link before, but to sum up:

Start with a one sentence summary of the story. For good examples, search for the New York Times Bestseller List. Every book has a one sentence summary. Look at books you've read and compare how you'd summarize them. Then look at a few for books that you haven't read and figure out why they pique your interest. This is concise writing.

It took several tries to get something that worked for me, and as I went on to later steps of the Snowflake method, I went back to polish that one sentence.

 The next step was to write a five sentence paragraph  about my story telling the beginning, middle, and end. My first sentence was about my main character and the beginning of the story. The three middle sentences hit the catalyst for the story, the reaction of my main character, and the result of that reaction that brought the story to a climax.  The fifth sentence tells how it ends.

Even though I'm on step nine, which is a detailed outline, I have to go back to this and the individual character synopsis to check that it matches the sequence I created for the detailed outline.

One week and counting!