NaNoWriMo: Let’s write together
The idea here is to start a novel from idea generation and go all the way (hopefully) through the agenting process, the publishing process, marketing . . . everything that happens along the way to your very first author event at your local independent bookstore.
I don’t know if that’s what’s going to happen or not; we’re just getting started! But that’s the goal.
I’m going to be gearing everything we do toward that ultimate goal of finding representation from a literary agent and then hopefully traditionally publishing your novel. If that doesn’t happen, that’s okay, we will shift gears and we will self-publish it, and we’ll be talking about all those things every step of the way.
It seems like a good idea to write something accessible to more people if I’m going to do my job as an instructor, or as a mentor, or as a coach for writing. I need to make this process and story as accessible for as many novelists and aspiring writers as humanly possible.
Again, the idea is I’m starting from zero. I’m going to go to a couple of photo free photo websites (pexels.com and unsplash.com), look for an image that speaks to me—that I find compelling or that inspires me—and we’re going to write a novel based on that image. The final story may change and shift and morph throughout the writing process; that’s fine, that’s normal. But you’ll be along for the ride every step of the way as we talk about structure and plot and pacing and characterization and dialogue and description and white space and all those things that go into novel writing.
One question I do see a lot is, “Where do you get your ideas?” or “How can I get ideas to write?” This is one thing you can do: go to a free photo site and just surf around and see what compels you, see what grabs you. (The other advantage to doing that is if we end up going the self-publishing or independent publishing route, this image can become the basis of a great book cover.)
I found this shot of a girl sitting on a skateboard with sort of a do-rag thing going on:
photo credit:
Olia Danilevich
She’s got kind of this Mona Lisa smile going on. She is somebody I would write about.
I also like this girl by herself at a carnival or fair of some kind. She doesn’t look like she’s very happy, but there’s this prominent image of the ferris wheel in the background:
photo credit:
Hannah Busing
That’s interesting to me. Why is she there? Why is she by herself? What happened in the moment before?
Even as I scrolled through many images, I already started mulling ideas about these two images. How can how can they be related? How can they be in relationship?
As these posts continue, we will also talk about outlines: should you outline, should you not outline, should you be a pantser or an outliner . . . all these kinds of things we’ll discuss but right now, all I need is something to get the fires burning.
Here is the story idea I came up with:
I have decided that these two are friends, and they have been friends for a long time, but the girl in the carnival picture perhaps has depression or is struggling with something at home. Some external force is is acting upon her. They go to this carnival, she meets a boy and he’s a carney—maybe he operates the one of the games. She falls for him and decides she’s going to run away with him to the carnival, or follow him to the next town or whatever. Her friend on the skateboard is like, “Not by yourself, I’m coming with you!” She has her own baggage, but I don’t know what that is yet.
And it doesn’t matter, because now we have three characters and a story.
I have no idea where it’s going, but this is how it works. So that’s where we’re going to leave it for now. Thank you very much for reading, and we’ll see you soon!
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