Emergency plot surgery II

When all else fails, write a murder mystery. These can be set in absolutely any genre, and can be as bloody, grimly serious or sickly funny as you like.

Choose a genre and a setting. You want pirates? You got 'em. you'd rather be writing high fantasy about The Knights of the round table? That's good too. Vampires and werewolves? Grow up. That's so six months ago. But you can still have a murder mystery peopled with vampires and lycanthropes, if you must.

Concoct six characters. They can be pretty cliched, that doesn't matter. They'll develop as you write. Then create a victim. Randomly assign the character's a motive for killing him/her (money, lust, jealousy, revenge and so on ...). Make one of your characters your investigator. Have them start by explaining why they would have killed the victim. Then have the MC casually admit that somone beat them to it, but (here's the clever bit) everyone thinks the MC did it. So the MC has to clear his or her name ...

Emergency plot surgery

I've been really nervous the last day or so. Ditching a plan and deciding to wing it - AGAIN - suddenly seems like a really bad idea. But there's no going back. Whatever is going on will have to work itself out over the next thirty days, as I write. Or not. That might have to wait until editing. Doesn't matter.

So if I'm nervous, some of you must be panicking. Please, don't. Take a breathe. Write. If you don't know what to write about, invent a couple of characters - A BARBARIAN WARRIOR and a SLEEK ELVEN ARCHER (or equivalents appropriate to your genre) and put them in an odd situation. Perhaps the BARBARIAN mistakes the ELF for a woman and propositions him. If that isn't enough, send in a DWARF, who picks a fight with the ELF, only to have the BARBARIAN throw him out the window for harrassing the BARBARIAN'S girl. You see how this works?

It doesn't matter if whatever you are writing falls to pieces. The important thing is to be writing - we can always fix the pieces, later. We can't fix something that isn't there. Once you finish writing for the night, take a few minutes to think about what you want to cover tommorrow. That way, your unconcious mind can start putting ideas together over night.

Eeep! Plot munchies!

This ... happpens ... every ... single ... year.

About 48 hours out from Nano, I suddenly felt my plot is not only the most boring and ill conceived plot ever, and my characters the least interesting or original, but I'm writing in entirely the wrong genre. Suddenly, I want to write about Dragons. And Elves. And Cthulhu. And romance. On Mars. And pretty much everything except Donna and her bloody half assed attempts at solving mysteries.

I've got the plot munchies, in other words.

Plot munchies stem from two sources. Either, you're losing confidence in your story and yourself, which is perfectly natural and the way it should be. In which case you have to stick to it with bloody minded determination. Or, your creative imagination is prompting you to address some problem you haven't identified. In which case, you need to work out what it is and sort it, otherwise you'll get blocked.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell which type of plot munchies you're experiencing.

I think I've managed to sate mine for now. I gave some serious thought to my plot (such as it is - being on holiday has meant nil planning has been done in the last week ... oh, well) and decided I didn't like it anymore. So I chanaged it. In my original version, my victim was a fairly anonymous person called Victor.

Problem was, I didn't see poor Victor as a real person. People could have killed him all day and I wouldn't have cared. He was just a corpse for the other characters to have a mystery about. So I'm changing focus and instead of dead victor in a warehouse, it'll be the killing of a school girl that Donna is called on to investigate. And even though Lucy dies before the start of the story, I care, and I want to find out why and who killed her.

Interestingly, a lot of my planning for the murder of Victor can be transferred straight over to the new conception of the story - a hint that my original version wasn't right. But now it all seems a better fit.

Still, 24 hours to go, for me. Plenty of time to change my mind again.

More on outlining

When people are outlining, they tend to think in terms of the plot, purely. There is a lot more to a novel than plot, however.

Especially in the opening stages, you will be introducing characters, and establishing what sort of people they are. You'll also be describing settings and creating the mood for the story. All of that would be left out in an outline that focuses on the plot mechanics and nothing else.

So if you are phasing out a story, remember to include plenty of phases where apparently trivial things allow the important characters to show the reader what sort of person they are. These could be little incidents that don't do anything to move the plot forwards, or even have anything at all to do with the main action - going to buy a newspaper and remembering to say "Thank you" to the person in the newsagents, for example, or the main character spending half an hour listening to a friend complain about her problematic love-life, even though we know this is an inconvenience.

Setting and atmosphere are also important and need to be established. If you're following an ABC outline, you might not give the reader enough information to help them picture what is going on, or feel the appropriate sort of emotion. You'll also, probably, feel dissatisfied with your writing, because you'll know it is missing something. And, of course, every word you write describing a setting is a word less you have to write to reach 50,000 ...

Here's an example, from the book I think of as the best story every written - Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad. It is page 69 of the story, for no particularly good reason:

She had watched her carriage roll away with the three guests from the north. She smiled. Their three arms went up simultaneously to their three hats. Captain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance, had already begun a pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She lingered, approaching her face to the clusters of flowers here and there as if to give time to her thoughts to catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight vista of the corridor.

A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with coloured featherwork, had been slung judiciously in a corner that caught the early sun; for the mornings are cool in Sulaco. The cluster of flor de noche buena blazed in great masses before the open glass doors of the reception rools. A big green parrot, brilliant like an emerald in a cage that flashed like gold, screamed out ferociously, "Vive Costaguana!" then called twice mellifluously, "Leonarda! Leonarda! in imitation of Mrs. Gould's voice, and suddenly took refuge in immobility and silence. Mrs. Gould reached the end of the gallery and put her head through the door of her husband's room.

Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, was already straping his spurs. He wanted to hurry back to the mine. Mrs. Gould, without coming in, glanced about the room. One tall, broad bookcase, with glass doors, was full of books; but in the other, without shelves, and lined with red baize, were arranged firearms: winchester carbines, revolvers, a couple of shotguns, and even two pairs of double-barrlled holster pistols. Between them, hung by itself, upon a strip of scarlet velvet, hung an old cavalry sabre, once the property of Don Enrique Gould, the hero of the Occidental Province, presented by Don Jose Avellanos, the hereditary friend of the family.

That's about 300 words, so if you're going in for very detailed outlining, it is one phase. In an outline, it would be described as "Emily Gould walks through the house to her husband's room" and, in plot terms IT IS ENTIRELY POINTLESS, but in other respects, it is a very important page:

• It helps establish Emily's character, particularly in contrast to her husband's - after all, he should be there to wave goodbye to his important guests.
• It includes several ironic or symbolic tropes such as the parrot shrieking "Vive Costaguana!" a bit of senseless patriotism which will be replicated in human form later on, and the guns in the cabinet are suggestive of the danger that hangs over the Gould's.

So don't forget to include space in your outlines for character building, atmosphere and symbolism. After all, if it is just going to be about the clever plot, a reader would be as well sticking with the outline.

My sorry example

I first did Nanowrimo back in 2004. That, my friends, seems a long time ago now. I've done it every year since then, and always managed to hit 50K. One thing I know for sure - reaching 50k is the least of your worries.

In my first Nanowrimo, I set out to write a murder-mystery. I had a vague plot and one scene in my head - someone standing on a beach at night, coming back to their senses after a drunken blackout. My idea was that the character - named Bob, after a friend - would be framed for a series of grisly murders. In trying to clear his name, Bob would discover that he was, infact, a killer, though perhaps not the killer.

It didn't work out like that. A couple of days in, I introduced a character called Angie, simply to boost the word count. She and Bob proceeded to spend a lot of time having sex, travelling to Amsterdam and smuggling drugs. None of this was foreseen or planned.

Ultimately, I was about to reveal that Bob was a mass murderer when I realised something was Very Wrong. I'd forgotten to include any murders. Not even one. Bob and Angie had been so busy with all the other stuff, I'd forgotten what I'd originally intended to write about. It was a fantastic ride, however, starting two weeks into November and writing 4000 words a day, without time to think ahead or plan. Inevitably, I learned a lot of tricks to keep the narrative going in these circumstances.

In 2005, I started out with a main character who bore some resembleance to myself - a grumpy 30 something school teacher. He would investigate a killing at the school where he taught. After a few thousand words, I realised my narrator was dull and I hated him. I introduced a co-narrator, a female student with miles of attitude. She was good fun to write, and eventually I abandoned the luckless teacher completely. Ultimately, lack of plot was my undoing - I couldn't decide who was behind the killing, and so I simply set pieces all the way to 50,000 words, hoping one of them would spark something. It never happened. I realised that perhaps - just perhaps - some forethought might be helpful.

So in 2006, I wrote a brief plan, just a couple of paragraphs. It was a hardboiled murder-mystery that started well, but as the story evolved, I became uncomfortable. I couldn't see how I could reconcile the two plot strands that were developing - and they had to be reconciled, otherwise the story would make no sense. I didn't manage this reconciliation. Post nano, I seperated them completely into two stories. I expanded one of them into a full length, 62,000 word story. While still very imperfect, it had a begining, a middle and an end, a satisfactoy number of people were killed, I knew (by the end) who did it and eventually solved the mystery.

2007 saw me revisit the hardboiled genre, and my long sufferring Private Detective, Jack Callaghan. I sent him to a small Southern town to investigate the killing of one of his old army buddies. There was racism, murder, a gun fight in a blazing house and then (because you can never have too much of a good thing) a fist fight in a blazing house, a gorgeous and evil woman (you need those), a noble and lovely woman (you need those also) and of course thwarted love - for my one golden rule is Jack Can Never Be Happy.

I slogged away at it through November, December and into January, eventually reaching 92,000 words, some of which weren't bad. There were still flaws. Most noteably, I forgot to introduce my killer until the scene where he was unmasked - once again I'd followed too many interesting diversions and lost track of where I was - but nothing that couldn't be fixed with editing.

Last year's nano, on the other hand, was a horrible, mishapen thing, that lurched and blundered hopelessly about until I reached 50,ooo words, at which point I wrote the most unconvincing wrap-up in the history of detective fiction, and tried to forget the whole thing.

LESSONS TO LEARN FROM THIS:

First, and most important - Keep trying. I had to do three nanos before I managed to come out with something like a real narrative, and that was after extensive reworking of a botched nano effort.

Second - Don't get bogged down in details or too hung up on your plot. If there is something that you really want to explore and it is going to take yo away from your plot, go with it. This is you unconscious mind feeding you new ideas. If it doesn't work out, you can always have a character wake up, yawn, and say "I've just had the strangest dream ..."

Third - Remember that Nanowrimo is more about fun, practice, learning writing tricks and good writing habits than it is about producing a great novel. You might get lucky and produce something that can be hanmmered into shape, though perhaps not first time.

Fourth - Don't write about characters who are very dear to you. Some people carry characters around in their hearts and can't bear to see them sullied in the dirty scrum of Nano. If Tarquin, Prince of Arongier is a character you deeply love, have been developing for years and want to write great book around, don't bring him into Nano. Find someone you don't care too much about, who can take a few knocks. Believe me, by the end of Nano, you'll care for him or her a lot more than that simpering fool, Tarquin.

Planning versus winging it

In the final analysis, there are two types of people - those who, if they were trying to write a novel in a month, would plan it carefully, and those who wouldn't.

I've never been a planner. Every year, I try. I am full of good intentions. Each October I dutifully start trying to think about what I will write in November. I write murder-mysteries, and the received wisdom is that a mystery should be planned. You have to figure out the clues and red-herrings, the intricacies of the murders, the unravelling leading to a satisfying denouement. Most of all, you need to know who killed who, and why.

Perhaps. So far, however, that hasn't been my experience. I find the openess of making up a situation, throwing in complications and then trying to work out some sort of feasible solution to be far more fun and creative than plodding my way through a dull outline, prepared weeks before and that I am already bored of.

Still, each to his or her own. I do some rudimentary outlining in the latter stages of writing, once I've created a horribly complicated mess and need to start making sense of it. Usually, 2/3 to 3/4 of my way through a story, I'll look back at what I've got and work out where I want to be at the end of it. It is only at this stage that I'll decide who my killer is, and the crucial evidence needed to convict him or her. Often, this involves pretending that I've written stuff that isn't in the story at all - whole characters have to be magically incorporated, events recalled that will only occur in subsequent drafts. It is messy, but it works for me.

Usually, I set out 20 steps to get me to this stagem, and aim to write at least a thousand words for each step. They are very generall, i.e. "Jack follows Letitia to the secret house and confronts her." Though vague, I could cheerfully write about that for a couple of thousand words.

This should not be confused with the outlining method known as Phasing - where the story is broken down into literally hundreds of little steps, and you aim to write about 250-500 words for each step. I find this idea fascinating, but alien. How can you plan out a novel in advance like that, whe you don't know what the characters will actually do when they are confronted by the situations and dangers in the plot? Because you'll find your characters do start to do odd things that you don't expect.

I think a lot of the people who find themselves in trouble during nano are the ones who have planned out their novels in detail, and then find the story they want to write no longer matches the one they planned. Because they've invested so much in the plan, they don't have the confidence to wing it, become fustrated or bored, and quit.

Also, bluntly, I can't imagine spending so much time planning something out like that - no wonder people get fustrated waiting for the 1st of November starting pistol only to find they've completely lost interest. Their story has become old and stale to them before they even start to write it. Also - and this is a particular risk - they's had too much time to see the holes in their plot and this has discouraged them. It is a lot easier to look back at 50,000 words of semi-sensible novel and identify the bits that need to be fixed, than it is to set out to write something you know in advance will be flawed.

So, don't be afraid to plan in big strokes rather than intimate detail. And don't be afraid to follow your wild whims. And, if you are one of these people who likes to plan everything out in advance, don't be afraid to ignore the whole of this message.

Discipline

I've suggested you need to be selfish. Alas, there is more to it than that. You need discipline. After all, if you don't write 50,000 words, you'll have alienated you family and friends, neglected you pets and jeopardized your health for nothing.

The image of writers as louche dandies who spend their time making witty retorts and sleeping with attractive members of the opposite sex is a myth. When I'm not writing, my time is spent talking to a three year old who thinks singing "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes ... and poo!" is witty. The only person I get to sleep with is my wife and she's generally asleep, as in actually asleep, by the time I've finished writing for the night.

Writing is a skill and you needs to practise regularly to develop it. Some atheletes might be born with stupendous ability, but won't achieve their full potential without training. Thus it is with writers. Damn few get published without slogging through mundane, fustrating, demoralising and often seemingly pointless tasks. Nanowrimo will probably turn out to be one of these training exercises.

What sort of habits do you need to develop? I think the most important is regularity. Make sure you write same time, same place. This will train your creative imagination to 'turn on' at the right time. Ever had a great idea at 3am and not been able to remember it in the morning? That's creativity running amok. Often, I might have only a vague idea of what I'll going to write. After a hundred words or so, something comes to me, apparently out of nowhere, and it's great. That's because my creativity knows not to waste its time giving me dazzling insights at 3am - it knows that it will have an opportunity to reveal them later on. I've also found that regualr writing means my writing time is used efficiently - on a very good night, I can hammer out 2,000 words in an hour. Again, this because my creativity knows when to move from neutral to high gear.

I recommend you make a point of setting aside your writing time now, though nano is three weeks away. Get into the habit of sitting down and writing something - even if it is just a journal, a short story, or planning for nano - to get your creativity trained. This will also help you physically accustom to a writing routine - nowadays I skip lunch and have a big supper to give me the late evening energy burst I need. It will also allow those around you to get used to the idea that you'll be hogging the computer and really want to be left alone at certain times.

Another discipline issue - ration your time on the Nanowrimo forum. It is addictive. It is easy to squander an entire month procrastinating with other procrastinators, telling each other that you can do it and you'll start soon and your ideas are all good. They might be, but if they don't get written down, they're worthless. Don't spend your precious time telling other people how hard it is. Complaining and commiserating won't make writing easier or your word count bigger. If you are hooked, use it as a reward for hitting a goal: "1,000 words by 9 o'clock, then half an hour on the website." But stick to that, otherwise you'll find you've lost a whole day without writing anything.

Initial advice for Nano newbies

First thing you have to come to terms with is that Nanowrimo doesn't last one month. Not unless your some sort of agraphobic freak on a drip with a colostomy bag. When you think about the amount of time you will actually spend writing, tt probably lasts between 60 and 120 hours, depending on how long you can actually commit to writing. So that's between two and a bit and five days. So during your actual writing time, you're looking at about 400-800 words an hour.

That, I hope, makes you somewhat nervous.

Of course, there are crazy people who spend ten hours at a time typing away but I don't think you want to be like them. Not only must they literally have NO LIFE, but it must be excruiating spending so much time with your novel. By the end of the month, your novel will be like a party, full of people you hate. You won't be able to leave soon enough. One of my big motivations for writing quickly is Getting It Over With.

Every year, I get newbies who say they can maybe write for 15 minutes, twice a week, and ask if I think that will be enough ... No. You need to work out how much time you will need, and make sure you can find it in the day. Doesn't matter if it is 11pm-1am, or 1pm-3pm when the child is having his afternoon nap. For me, it usually 9pm-Midnight. Hopefully, at that time, the children are in bed. My wife is very understanding and just leaves me alone.

So the first batch of questions I want you to answer are:

- When you are going to write? I'm a creature of habit, and I think you can train your creativity to switch on, if you develop good work habits.

- Are you being realistic about how much you will be able to write in that time? If you are going to amble along at 200 words an hour, you're going to need to set aside a lot more time. And you need to know this in advance.

- How will you make sure you aren't going to be disturbed? Family and friends often think 'support' means annoying you and distracting you. Children will demmand attention if they know you're trying to focus on something other than them. I can't see any hope for someone who says "I'll write 1667 words in half an hour while the children are watching Blue's Clues."

Selfishness

Nanowrimo means you have to be selfish.

The most important thing you have is time. November is thirty days. You won't believe how many demands will be made on your time in that month. People will badger you, organisations pester you, employers require stuff of you. The army will try to draft you, government departments will mix you up with someone totally unlike you in every aspect, who isn't doing nanowrimo but who is committing tax fraud, and the police will try to arrest you. Pirates - for where there is nanowrimo, there are sure to be pirates - will try and pressgang you into their crew and take you off on exotic, swashbuckling adventures. But you have to be selfish, and learn to say no to everyone.

November is your month. Make sure people know it. They won't listen, and will try and pester you anyway with their petty concerns, but if you tell people in advance, then you can say "I did warn him your honour, that I needed to be left alone in November but he didn't listen," when you're in court for punching your (ex) friend for disturbing you on the 29th of November. So tell people. Then, insulate yourself.

Insulating yourself is making sure the people who are too selfish to heed your selfish demands for privacy, don't get near you. Borrow a friends big, ugly dog so that people won't come knocking at you door, switch the ringer on your phone to off, uninstall Messenger and close your facebook account so that your friends can't bother you with their useless lives.

Yes, your best friend may have spilt up with X (though you aren't sure who X is, you can't put a face to the name, because they've only been going out a week, and all her boyfriends are bland and interchangeable, anyway), and she might want you to comfort her and pamper her and tell her that she's a worthwhile human being and all men are swine. But she's got the rest of her life to get over her broken heart (and it isn't like she hasn't had practice), and you've only got one short month to complete Nano. Don't let anyone spoil it, no matter how much they want to.

So be prepared to be as selfish as it takes. Writers aren't necessarily nice people, but they are writers.

Rewards

Okay, I know I come across as a bit heavy and negative _ I prefer to call it realistic - but it isn't all bad.

I want you to plan a series of rewards for yourself through out the month. Work out how many words you need to have written by certain key dates (taking into account days where you may be unavoidably away from the keyboard) and work out a schedule of rewards for when (not if) you achieve the targets on schedule.

Typically, rewards are weekly treats and ased on the standard 1667 words per day. So if you hit 11669 words by the end of Day 7, you get your first reward. Obviosuly, it you are aiming for more words per day, or if you're going to miss the first week of writing, your reward chart has to refelect that.

Perhaps you can decide that if you're still on target after the first week, you can buy yourself a book, CD or DVD, or see a movie, or have a relaxing bath with your beloved (if he/she wants anything to do with you after being ignored for a week), or whatever works for you. But make it something fairly substantial and special, so it is a genuine reward, not something you'd do anyway.

If you are so minded, you could make up a cute little race-track style game with 30 steps on it, the rewards marked out, and move a little token representing yourself along it as you progress.

BUT (and this is the important part) you can't just give yourself the rewards if you don't hit your targets. If you don't stay on schedule, you don't get the CD. Not ever. Well, at least not until next year. Otherwise, where is the motivation?

So no "Boo-hoo-hoo, I feel so sorry for myself I'll buy it for me anyway." This is about motivating yourself to achieve, and rewarding achievement. If you're going to give yourself the treat regardless, there is no motivation.