I’m working my way through “No Plot? No Problem?” by Chris Baty. The general message in this book seems to be that you don’t need to do any planning in order to write the 50,000 word rough draft of your novel. That it’s actually better not to. I know this approach doesn’t work for me, although I admit it could work very well for a more spontaneous, right-brain person.
The rest of the book is full of tips to get your through your one month typing spree.
Afterwards, I’ve found another book that looks like exactly what I need. "First Draft In 30 Days: A Novel Writer’s System for Building a Complete and Cohesive Manuscript" by Karen Wiesner. It contains a very exact plan to get from idea to detailed outline. She says the outline will be so detailed that it could be considered a first draft. This will be my next book for this goal.
Here’s a general timeline of her approach:
Days 1-6: Preliminary outlines and sketches
Days 7-13: Research
Days 14-15: Story evolution (ideas for beginning, middle, end)
Days 16-24: Formatted outline
Days 25-28: Evaluating the strength of theoutline
Days 29-30: Revising outline – and on Day 30, you’re to put this outline “on a shelf for at least two weeks to several months.”
In the meantime, I’m also reading through the lessons on http://hollylisle.com/. The one on mapping your “world” is very interesting. I think it will help me considerably to spend time doing that when I hit a wall on the outlining.
Interestingly I’ve noticed my daughter always takes time to download or draw pictures of the characters in her story, and she’s written more stories than I have.
Last but not least on Storyright.com , I’ve fleshed out the first chapter of one of my ideas. And I’ve briefly described chapters two and three. I’ve also begun to define the main characters in a fairly detailed manner. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I’m moving forward.
This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten!
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