Well, look no further kids! In order to help out my fellow Wrimos and geeks, let me present to you the Zombie Outbreak guide to NaNoWriMo.
Getting started
Ok, it might be a bit late for this this year, but still, its useful information. Sometimes you sign up all ‘YEAH LET’S WRITE A NOVEL YO IT’S GONNA BE SWEET’, and then when you sit down in front of your word processing program, you find you’ve got nothing. Nada. Zilch.
It’s a horrible feeling, but fear not! There is a solution! What you need to do is think about your favourite genre, and then find an existing work you can steal mercilessly from. Into sci fi? Why not nick from Firefly or Star Trek? Horror? Rob a monster from Silent Hill! Adventure? Borrow Nathan Drake’s handsome chops!
I’m not saying write yourself a rip off of Fallout 3 or anything, but if you can borrow some plot elements from your favourite franchises, you’ll find you can build a new story around them. Handy!
Characters
Characters are hard. It is scientific fact. Sometimes you can be writing away, but you feel as if your main character is nothing more than a cardboard cut out that you’re projecting yourself onto (oh wait, haven’t I just described that bint out of Twilight?). What do?
Well, I find the best way to build a character is again, by stealing. This time, steal from your friends. Do you have a friend who organises his dice by colour and type? Put that in your character. Do you know someone who can’t play drums on Rock Band without smashing her foot down on the bass pedal and breaking it? Put it in. If you can gather the right blend of traits and idiosyncrasies, your character will be much better fleshed out and believable.
Plot
Sometimes it’s very easy to get bogged down in character descriptions, and have lengthy conversations between people in your story that don’t go anywhere. When this happens, you need to start thinking about plot and pacing.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, think of it like a DnD or table top roleplaying game campaign. If you went through the whole game going into room after room, finding more and more demons to slay, after a while you’d get bored out of your tiny skull and start throwing dice at the GM (or is that just me? Erm, sorry Rich...).
However, if that campaign were to include different elements, such as devious traps, fiendish puzzles, or simply getting a wizard drunk in the tavern (which we did once), then it gets exciting. Apply this to your novel, and mix it up a bit. Bring in a tidal wave. Send your characters on a quest, even if it is just to Tescos. Put a dragon in the basement. It’s your book, do what you want!
And finally...
Honestly? Don’t worry too hard about what you’re writing. I had a moment last week where I thought ‘OH GOD THIS IS ALL CRAP I’LL HAVE TO START OVER’, but I’ve soldiered on regardless. You’ll have that moment too, if you haven’t already, I promise you. And when you do, the best advice I can give is, DON’T GIVE UP. At all. Ever. You might think its crap now, but it’s only a rough first draft. You can fix all the plot holes and glaring inconsistencies later. For now, just have fun with it.
And watch out for that dragon in the basement.
1 comment:
Thats why i don't run dungeons and dragons any more, its too combat focused and very hard to tell a story with.
But in all honestly, i think running your story as a game is a very good exercise and should be attempted by most writers, You can only make your characters do what your brain thinks is the right thing to do. But put your characters in someone else's hands and they suddenly become unpredictable, taking your story in ways you would never thought of.
Some of my all time favourite rpg moments are when I've had to throw away what I had written and go with the idea my players had come up with.
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