Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 26: Nanowrimo

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/11/22/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-26-nanowrimo/

Key points: Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, is an opportunity to write 50,000 words in November along with 160,000 other people worldwide. See http://www.nanowrimo.org/ Nanowrimo forces you to write quickly, turn off your internal editor, shut up and write.

What do you do when characters act dumb? If it's in character, fine. If it's not, what information are they missing, what emotions cloud their judgment? Forging ahead is one of the best ways to find an alternate solution. What do you do when main characters digress? Keep writing, and expect to throw away words. Save the good stuff for another book, because there will be other Novembers. What do you do when the pacing changes? If you're comfortable, keep going. You discover aspects of your style by writing. It's possible to have character development in action -- fight scenes can reveal and develop characters. Getting ideas on paper lets you see them and develop them, plus it gives you good practice. Nanowrimo -- keep writing.
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[Howard] Katherine, give us a writing prompt that involves a traveling shovel.
[Katherine] On the nano forums, I don't know if any of you all have been there but there's this sort of motif about the traveling shovel of death. One of your characters gets killed with a shovel somehow. You just have to work it into your story.
[Dan] Awesome.
[Howard] There's your writing prompt. Kill somebody with a shovel. No, wait a minute. Write about killing somebody with a shovel. You're out of excuses, now...
[Dan] Kill somebody with a shovel.
[Howard] Go write.