national novel writing month

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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Before we begin:

You can publish a novel with a traditional publisher.
I believe in you.

I say this up front because what follows is a little on the snarky side, and I need you to know that I am nothing special. I was just like every other aspiring writer when I got my first agent and first book contract. If I can do it, you can, too. (If that’s the direction you choose to go. There are lots of reasons to go straight to indie publishing, which we’ll cover at another time.)

Also, congratulations! I’m serious—you’re on a site called FictionMentor.com for crying out loud, which suggests you take your writing seriously, and that’s the thesis of this article: Take writing and publishing your novel seriously if you want to see your book on store shelves.

How do I know without reading a single page of your novel that you’re not ready to submit the manuscript to an agent? Easy:

You haven’t finished writing your novel.

I’m guilty of this. I once sent a query to an editor while about halfway through a novel, thinking, “Why not, it’ll just be rejected, may as well get used to it.” Surprise! I got a request for a full manuscript. So I spent the next ten days feverishly working to finish the thing. And no, it did not get picked up. Shocking, right?

Always finish your novel before taking another step. Hundreds (thousands?) of people do this every November during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which is great, but too many of them neglect the next step:

You haven’t revised and edited your novel.

Typing “The End” does not mean you are finished. There’s still revision and editing to be done.

Here at FictionMentor, I define revision as the broad, sweeping changes needed to ensure your continuity is correct; the plot is seamless and interesting; the dialogue fresh and moving the story along; the characters compelling; i.e., big changes. One or two revisions is not enough. Three or more is common . . . for working, published authors.

I define editing as correcting spelling, grammar, and formatting errors. Editing requires two, three, or more passes through the entire manuscript, whereas revision can take . . . well, as many passes as it takes to make the story shine.

Note: Editing also includes at least one pass with a hard-copy (printed out) manuscript. Research shows we catch more errors reading on paper than we do on a screen. Put your best foot forward on every single page before submission. The occasional typo won’t doom your manuscript – nobody’s perfect – but it’s your job to make your copy as clean as possible, especially those first ten pages.

When do you think your novel is ready to send? Drop a comment @tomleveen and share your journey!

Keep an eye out for Part II…

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