NaNoWriMo Prep

And why October is where the real work happens

Hello! And happy Fall! It’s finally cooled off around here and I couldn’t be happier. This time of year always feels really productive for me, like it’s time to snuggle in at home with tea and chunky throw blankets and, for example, finish your draft of book 2, or write a NaNo draft!

This newsletter is craft focused, but don’t worry, I have some news for KILT TRIP that rhymes with PARCs coming soon, so I’ll let you know when a very exciting box arrives in the mail!!

For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National November Writing Month where authors try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. For my fellow plotters or plantsers, I strongly believe having a foundation in place frees you up to enjoy the fun of NaNo (the community! the adorable word trackers!!) and cuts down on the frustrations of fast drafting. And that work happens in Preptober!

For me, story foundation is rooted in character. I’m going to break down my three favorite craft books and combine these methods to get at the heart of your story and keep the driving force of character at the forefront of what you write.

First, let's cover the basics in these books:

GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict by Debra Dixon

Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland &

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

GMC: GOAL, MOTIVATION, AND CONFLICT

Debra Dixon explains that each story needs a:

Who: the main character
What: the goal
Why: the motivation
Why not: the conflict

She breaks these components into external and internal:

For me, the External side of the table comes more naturally. It's the plot. The character sets out to get a tangible thing that's important to them and faces challenges along the way.

(Side note: Kat Lewis has an excellent thread on Twitter about types of external goals you can check out here.)

The Internal side of this table is what always throws me. Because more often than not, my characters don't *realize* they have some internal desire and then act in a way to get it. Often the story forces them to confront a misbelief and that leaves me confused as to how to fill this out in a useful way.

My critique partners and I like to talk about Romance Reasons when we're reviewing each other's stories. The idea is that the reason is flimsy, but I'll go along with it because it serves the story and I want to get lost in the narrative.

But I find I am able to fill out a GMC table in much the same way, but when I get into the thick of writing, I realize what I've outlined is too flimsy to support the whole story.

I want to add some important pieces from K.M. Weiland to strengthen the tool and hold myself accountable (so I'm not filling out worksheets to procrastinate!).

CREATING CHARACTER ARCS

It's a bit challenging to attribute some of the definitions below because they are so commonly used across craft books, so I'm throwing out that caveat! These ideas are in K.M. Weiland's book, and I've also seen them used widely in others.

K.M. Weiland describes the character arc components as:
The Lie: The character holds onto a deep-seated misbelief about themselves, the world, or both
The Ghost: This lie stems from something traumatic that happened to the character (also called The Wound, which I like better)
The Truth: The Thing the character Needs (as opposed to the Thing the character Wants, which is the external story goal). This is also the completion of the character arc.

STAKES

Stakes are an important part of writing a compelling story that is not explicit in these theories, in my mind.

What I often see when I review authors' GMC grids is that the stakes are baked into the motivation and they are often *positive stakes* only. The character wants something and it's going to bring them money/love/happiness, etc. if they get it. Which is great, but not everything!

I've added the question, What happens if the character doesn't achieve their goal? to force us to prove that the character doesn't only want their goal for personal reasons, but that something negative is going to happen if they don't succeed. That's what drives the intensity of the story. If the character fails and is no worse off because of it, the story isn't nearly as compelling as it could be.

Let's combine these definitions with the GMC table.

THE EMOTIONAL WOUND THESAURUS

My favorite part of this book is hidden all the way back in the appendix. There's a Character Arc Progression Tool that ties together the external GMC and the character arc with a blank version to photocopy. Honestly, the book is worth it for that alone (but also the rest of the book is excellent, too!)

Some details I'll include from Angela and Becca to add to our super tool:
Wound: Whatever happened in the Character's backstory that caused emotional trauma
Fear: The fear that the same emotional trauma could happen again
Emotional Shielding: The Character develops a Lie, along with other biases, dysfunctional behaviors, etc. to prevent that emotional trauma from ever happening again. This keeps them from learning The Truth.
Unmet Need: Because of the wound/fear/emotional shielding, the Character now has an unmet need (from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) which creates the basis of the character arc.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

I build these out for each POV character before I start writing. This may look simple, but connecting all these pieces can get quite complex.

If you need one-on-one help

I have a few spots reserved in October to support NaNo authors! I offer 60-minute voice/video/messaging calls for $75 if you are a verbal processor and want to talk out your story as well as an Outline Review if that’s more your style (also $75 for up to 5000 words). DM me or reach out on my website if you want to book!

Good luck to everyone participating and I’d love to hear about your project in the comments!