The current rage - I'm told - is adult colouring books. I'm sure they provide hours of inspiring, magical enjoyment. I don't have time for such distractions ...
You know how excited kids get, and how they ask you how many sleeps until some event? Their birthday, Christmas, the start of the school holidays ...
The secret of winning NANO - going through that 50K barrier before time runs out on day 30 - boils down to setting goals and meeting targets. On the NANO site, each time you enter your word-count-to-date, a bar chart tells you how you're progressing. If you're on schedule, writing your 1666 words per day, it's good to see today's column above the target line. If you're slipping behind, it can...
NaNoWriMo fast approaches and it's crucial, before I start writing for real at midnight on 31 October, that I make some decision on tense and voice. First question: which tense to use? Past or present? Past tense would be the easy option. It's the natural way of telling a story - something that happened in the past, recounted now. Using the present tense can create a sense of immediacy. It can...
Before I write - and also during the writing process - I make notes to myself about any research I need to do, and additional information I'll need. I create a list of questions I'll need to answer. For Safari Supper, one such question is: 'How will the murderer kill the victim?' For now, I am assuming it's going to be by poisoning but, to arrive at a plausible method, I...
September has gone and it won't be long before NaNoWriMo opens its doors for this year's participants. This weekend I'm gearing up to taking the next step in the planning of my Safari Supper novel. My story arc offers me an outline of the chapters - assuming I decide to present my story in chronological order. I'll certainly aim to write it in that order - and decide later precisely how it...
What a Carry On! The character who organizes the Safari Supper is central to my story. Although she may not be the main character, she's important to me. Her husband is also a key player, as a foil to her and for the role he plays in the distribution of wine to the hostesses. I might need the poison to be delivered via the wine - haven't decided yet! While other characters...
Hoorah! My story arc is written. I've been waiting for ideas to come but today, determined to make progress, I opened my Scrivener project 'Safari Supper' and just started typing. The words flowed. It never ceases to amaze me how, faced with a blank page, given a prompt, I can write. What I write comes from who knows where. Hence my tagline: I don't know what I think until I read what...
In much the same way I used Scrivener's Setting Sketch template for my various locations, the Character Sketch template is useful for my cast of characters. And until their 'real' names start to emerge, I'm also using dummy names for my characters. For each location, I've nominally assigned a hostess. I know the Safari Supper system relies on couples and filling tables of six or eight. But for now, I'm assuming one...
So I need a plot, but first, it seems, I need characters. I've read up on the 'theory' of characterisation, and it would appear that there should be two main characters: my protagonist playing the leading role, confronted by conflict, courtesy of my antagonist. Usually, the protagonist is the goodie, and the antagonist is the baddie - but not always. I am reliably informed that the protagonist and the antagonist both need...
