It’s NaNoWriMo Prep Time

It’s that time of the year where close to a quarter of a million of people spend thirty days belting out a novel. This is nothing short of amazing. Not everyone makes it, I myself have failed miserably, but it’s the attempt that matters. Like Everest, it’s the journey together to the top that builds character and inspires other to follow.

How many people have even thought in earnest about writing a novel. Go out to your friends, family, co-workers, classmates and ask them, “How you tried writing a novel before?” After enduring the odd looks and questioning stares, you’ll find that writing fifty thousand words is an endeaver few would even think of attempting, much less work to complete. And so I consider myself one of the fortunate few who would partake in this intrepid task.

Gathering the Gear

Now, obviously, to make it to 50k, a writer needs to gather ideas to write about. Fortunately for us, where a climb up Everest requires months and even years of planning and preparation down to the last detail, NaNoWriMo is something that can be put together in a few days using the cutting edge of outlining software, a couple of hours making detailed notes on paper, or a a handful of seconds while hastily scribbling on a napkin. Naturally the more thought put into an idea on it’s viability as a whole novel. I’ve had ideas that I thought were amazing and didn’t last past chapter four.

My bare essentials for a novel idea is have the beginning, the end, a bit of background, and a course for the main character’s journey. Simple and the seeds for a potentially epic storyline.  So if these simple elements are good, then more would be better, right? Well…

Over-packing

The problem with my prep right now is that it is TOO structured. I’ve got three distinct parts for the story, but then I tried to do like eight chapters each, which was too long in the beginning and two short in the middle so I had to change the amount of chapters to 6, 12, 6. But then that looked weird and I found myself having to find “stuff” to happen in those chapters and then I got really frustrated and just stopped.

I lost sight of what I was doing: making a story, not making a textbook. Once I got back to outlining the story and characters and events THEN the chapter breaks came naturally, and it didn’t feel like I was just stacking boxes of chapters. It messed with my sense of order, but it got in the way of my story telling so I tossed it.

If you are the kind of writer who can plan their stories down to the paragraph, I applaude you. It melts my brain doing that. And for those who can spin fifty thousands words from just a couple, I envy you as well. I fall in the middle, and I can imagine most writers do as well. The point of prep is to keep the spark alive until November 1st, without smothering it or neglecting it so it flickers out. This balancing act is arguably as difficult as the actual writing itself. Good thing we are almost there!

I’ll be updating throughout NaNoWriMo with little things here and there. Blaugh! I wish it were here already, I’m ready to go, and I’ll be my fellow writers are as well. Good luck to you all!

Sedentary Fitness Part III – Sleep

If you really stop to think about it, the fact that as humans we are required to spend a third of our lives unconscious is an incredibly bizarre concept. We work, play, fight, love, think, feel, and then pass out. It’s weird.

But sleep is essential to function. Anyone who has had to pull an all-niter for an exam, or work a graveyard shift, or has had kids knows that the lack of sleep will shut the body down. Like food and activity, everyone knows sleep is important, but getting enough and the right kind of sleep can be difficult to achieve.

• Get enough sleep

The amount of sleep that is ideal fluctuates as we grow up, but the eight hour rule of thumb to stick to. Now, obviously we can’t all afford to spend that much time, there is too much going on during the day in our lives to be bothered with that, right? The problem with that line of though, letting sleep slip to the bottom of the priority list is that it impairs mental function for the day, which means more time is required to do what needs to be done, pushing sleep even further down the list. Breaking that downward spiral is critical, I’ve had to do it a number of times and it is a living hell doing it. Better to not that happen in the first place. Even if a full eight hours is impractical, anything less than six hours of uninterrupted sleep erodes at the mind, and no amount of caffeine can make up for that.

• Get Routine sleep

The body is a machine and as such loves routine. The body feels out when the right time it is supposed to wind down and any irregularity will throw off this in often odd ways (which is why daylight savings time is so flipping stupid). Staying up late and sleeping in during the weekends throws of the body enough to make Monday mornings a nightmare. So I’ve found that consistently getting into bed, and subsequently getting out of bed, at normal times keeps me more awake during the day and fall asleep easier during the night.

• Naps

There is a lot of back and forth about naps and everyone handles them differently. Someone who works really early or really late might find them beneficial, while someone with a nine-to-five just finds them irritating. Some people physically can’t sleep during the day, while others can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Some will nap regularly and others only to recover from a poor night, stressful day, or to combat jet lag. In any case, the ideal time for a nap is between a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half. Any less and the body goes into partial sleep and nothing is really recovered (though for some people a ten minute power nap is better than nothing) and any more the body interprets this as full sleep and adjust accordingly, making that three hour nap more tiring than if you had just stayed awake and throws off your regular sleep cycle.

• Pre-sleep rituals

My sleep schedule is going to bed at ten at night and waking up at six in the morning. I allow for the ideal eight hours, with some wriggle room for falling asleep a bit later or waking up a bit early. But an hour before bed, I find if I shut off all electronic devices, hop into bed and do a bit of reading, I have a much easier time falling asleep. It’s not even so much that the electronic devices activate our “be awake” centers of our brains (though that is an issue) I would argue that external stimulus engages our mind by pulling it along, whereas reading, all the stimuli is in my head and so my brain calls the shots on when it is time to sleep. I would suggest this for everyone, an hour before going to bed, turn off the outside world and focus on you. Take a shower, meditate, a minor bit of stretching or exercising, chatting with our significant other, whatever it takes to disengage the mind and body and let it do its thing.

• The Sleeping Environment

It’s not enough to have the idea falling asleep mental state, but the physical environment must be addressed as well. Everyone has their own comfort zones. Mine are pretty broad and I’ve been fortunate in that, but not everyone does and I take pains to consider them. The classic five physical senses are a good place to start.

Hearing – Do you need complete silence, or a bit of white noise/music?

Sight – Complete darkness or do you need a tiny light source?

Smell – Is there something in the room/bed/hamper that gives of an odd scent?

Touch – Are the pillows, covers, and mattress to your liking, both in firmness and texture?

Taste – …Not sure what would go here. Brushing teeth?

There is also the idea temperature of the room, whether or not doors or windows are open, and so on. Experiment, try changing things up a bit and see if they enhance or detract form the sleeping experience.

• Caffeine

In a previous post I mentioned that not eating four hours before bed was ideal, some thing goes for caffeine Except I would suggest not consuming coffee for a full eight hours before bed. That means that if sleepy time is ten, then the last drop of coffee or coffee-like substance should be taken at two. Caffeine is an incredibly powerful drug, and I think it’s greatly under appreciated The caffeine might be out of your system before eight hours, but the effects of that late-afternoon coffee will keep the body engaged until well after midnight. Caffeine is a double edged sword, it can conquer your day while slicing into the wielder

Sleep, eating habits, and physical activity make up what I consider to be the heath trifecta. Next week will be the final part of this series where I combine all these elements into one big Venn diagram of awesome.

 

Plot is a Side Effect

Outlining is crucial. If writing is a journey, the outline is the road map. It can highly detailed, or a vague direction. Eventually though, even if the writer didn’t start out with a destination, there must be a conclusion of events where the audience arrives at the part where there is a satisfied conclusion. This is how we’ve all been taught, right?

Yes, but there is a critical element that a lot of tips and teachings about plot and outline seem to ignore. In keeping with the analogy: the plot is the journey, but no journey can happen without an adventurer.

Too often I’ve read books and watched movies that looked like stack of scenes. The protagonist show up to a place, does a thing, then moves onto the next. Almost as if the events were yanking the protagonist along for the ride; Almost as if the writer was focused on the thing happening without consideration for the character. More often than not, this leads to a lot of fun exciting “stuff” happening, but no real character or interpersonal growth. Obviously there are exceptions, like if that was the writer’s intent, to create a world where a person is being dragged around their world with no real control. But when we sit in the cinema and each scene is an abrupt or forced transition to the new cool thing we are supposed to see, then yeah character is not considered.

This kind of thought process for drafting a story is detrimental to the audience and the writer alike because audiences love characters. Fandoms exist for the sole purpose of taking a well written and well-loved characters, both villains and heroes alike, and put them in new situations or mix around with other stories (SuperWhoLock, anyone?). So to me it makes perfect sense to drive the story from the character from the beginning instead of weaving them through a static sequence of “stuff”.

Again keeping with the adventurer and journey analogy, I’ll be outlining some things to consider while outlining (which seems a bit meta, until you consider I had to outline how I was going to outline outlining).

• Place of Origin

The adventurer has to start somewhere, humble beginnings, superhuman ability, dark secrets unbeknownst to them, whatever it might be. There has to be a fully developed world in which they would be hard pressed to leave; the adventurer must make the hard choice of leaving the safety of their home to pursue something dangerous. Even if they hate their home or their home hates them, and it would be the healthiest thing in the world to leave that toxic place, the desire for safety cannot be understated.

• Final Destination

Even if it’s not fully understood and realized in the beginning, there must be a place to go in the end. This might be a place of safety the adventurer is seeking, or a place of extreme danger, but worth the risk to save or gain something dear to their heart (their life, livelihood, or love). In any case, there is a definite place for a definite reason the protagonist must fight to get to.

• Milestones

This is the part where “events” can take over the journey, but the adventurer must be allowed to choose their path. Things will happen to them, yes, more often the antagonist trying to thwart our adventurer. But then again, the antagonist is a person and has their own journey that needs cohesiveness and reason. If the hero’s journey is the “A” story, I would argue the villain has a “Z” story. So things don’t “just happen”. There can be elements of bad luck, but I would make them extra pain-in-the-ass hazards rather than major turning points. And the adventurer should make the most choices of anyone. For good or for bad, the adventurer must pave the paths to the Final Destination, not blindly follow what’s already there.

• Adventure Buddies

As much as the painful, introspective journey is appealing to write, audiences tend to want to follow not just one character, but a good half-dozen should keep them entertained. THe buddies don’t have to follow the adventurer the whole time, or even make a positive influence on the journey at large, but it goes give the adventurer some extra resources and the audience can tell a lot about a person on how they treat their peers, superiors, and subordinates. The adventure buddies also make their own choices that add a whole level of texture to the journey. I absolutely hate the term “round” and “flat” characters, people are complex in their infinite forms and so why would a writer deliberately chip away at that? Even seemingly one-dimensional characters have a reason and method to their attitude and behavior. It might not be rational, but it should be understandable if the adventurer is going to spend any length of time with them.

Those points are incredibly broad strokes, there is so much more possibility for dynamics. But I wanted to call to attention that character should drive plot, not the other way around. It is so much more satisfying to see a character struggle and prevail rather than see the protagonist win by going through the motions and being handed the trophy as a matter of course. Events and actions are fascinating, yes, but without people to give context and purpose, they are just words on a page or images on a screen.

Plot is a side effect of choice, as it is in real life. Capture that essence, and your story will be richer for it.