This is my first year @nanowrimo though I’ve known about it for years. For some of us nanowrimo helps get over the procrastination factor. I finally took the plunge and for me, the thrill of the chase will have to be enough and hopefully give me enough motivation to continue forward with other books and ideas. I plan on getting your ebook on structure but it will have to be AFTER this month…’cause I just don’t have time to read!

I have taken note of the fact that I need and ending! Thanks I think your post was amazingly useful, unlike many I’ve read.

I’ll be blogging about my progress. Feel free to stop by: http://www.motivatedprocrastinator.wordpress.com
Motivation + Procrastination – Time = ?

By all means, explore. We can never learn enough, never expose ourselves to too many opinions and views. In the end we must all find our way, our comfort zone, and our mentors.

I hope I continue to provide value to you, and that you’ll stick around. I appreciate your input, and by all means, challenge me when you feel the itch.

Not a challenge so much as an exploration .

You’re right the 101 Tips book is on Kindle. I’ll be delivering the Story Structure book to them within a few days. Will post that on the little ad in the middle column when it’s good to go.

Keep ‘em coming, Larry. Your’s is the best writing advice I’ve ever read – (and I’ve read a lot).

1) Trust the process. I love everything you’ve said about structure and having an outline. I’m a pantser longing to be a planner. My process is draft after draft after draft. I equate myself to the Tom Cruise character in Days of Thunder where he admits he knows nothing about driving, I started doing it and somebody said I was pretty good. That is/was me and writing. I’ve wanted to know how to outline, how to build stucture and I think your tutelage will do that. I like today’s extra lesson–trust the process. I’ve had trust issues all along.

2) “My book does the opposite, it’s optimized for novelists. We have a looser, more literary take on structure, even though it’s the same basic model with different labels. Neither McKee or Syd Field or me invented this stuff. Any more than Newton invented gravity. It just is.”

Golden. Well said.

Love my Nano Wrimo, have “won” it twice now.

As a new writer, it gave me a lot more than sludge, though sludge was part of the deal.

It gave me the support to try writing a novel. It gave me the delight of seeing that I could produce a lot of words that hung together into a semi-coherent story. It showed me a lot about where the stumbling blocks are for a new writer, showed me a lot about what I needed to learn, gave me courage and confidence to go do a lot of that learning. All of that is worth a great deal.

But this year, as a still new but not totally green novelist in training, I wanted to achieve a more coherent story during Nano.

I’ve tried writing from detailed outlines before, and got tangled up in them. I’ve tried pure organic, and I got lost and disappointed pretty soon. I’ve tried compromises, tried adapting various systems (Story, Save the Cat, etc.). Structure, and therefore process, eluded me not matter what I did.

I read Story Structure a couple of days ago and it delighted me. It answered so many questions, cleared up several key points of confusion, and gave me hope. I mapped out my plot points, with the last half feeling a little mushy (validated by your post today).

Now I’m answering all the questions on your one page cheat sheet. I’m halfway through. When I’ve finished them all, then I’ll start my Nano.

I’m raring to go, but waiting to have this sheet filled out. I can churn out the words. I proved that already–and that’s worth more than maybe you give it credit for a newbie. But I have new confidence that I’ll have something workable, maybe even shapely, at the end of this November.

I’ll let you know how it goes. But for now, all I can report is this is all making sense, for the first time actually, and my story idea is more exciting to me the more questions I answer from your sheet. Hopefully after tomorrow, Nano here I come.

It’s not delusional. It’s middle ground. It’s usually ignored.

Now, I’m a pantser. But I think I’m one of the exceptions you mentioned. When I first did NaNo08 (which I owe everything since it finally got me to FINISH a novel), though the writing itself was crap, the story felt good or at least had great potential. Scenes and ideas flowed together and made sense. Twists and just came out of nowhere and pieces fell in place (and not in sequence either). In the end, I had to sort of push the ending, but the ending fit nonetheless.

For this NaNo, I tried to structure it first. I sat down and wrote down my characters and then tried to write what happened first. But then I sort of went off on my own and for a few minutes basically had everything that was going to happen in the story and it felt right without following any guidelines or anything. Hero introduced. Goal made clear. Goal put in danger. Several twists (climatic moments). Clear ending.

But now I’m wondering. Am I delusional? Do I just instinctively know the structure, or am I blind and this isn’t the structure and its all really crap and I should learn the structure outside of myself?

It’s something I’ve been wondering about for years now…