I’m past the halfway point in writing a draft for NaNoWriMo. I’ve written more than 25K words in the last two weeks. I’m a writer, and gosh darn it, I #amwriting.
I’ve had some successes, and some setbacks. This is not my first, or even my second (or third) attempt at winning NaNoWriMo. But I think I’m going to win it this time, and the funny thing is, it doesn’t really matter if I do or don’t. Maybe that’s why.
Success:
I was able to outline my whole story plot, and let me tell you, it has made all the difference! It felt dumb at the time, but as I’ve plowed through the story, it’s helped tremendously. I have no one to thank for that except Larry Correia and John Brown.
Setback:
The down side to this is that I’m realizing my story is lacking in several areas as I go through it. Specifically, I haven’t done enough world-building and fleshing out of the setting. It was vague, and for making an epic urban fantasy realm, vague doesn’t cut it. It needs more detail, and so I’ll have to dig deep and come up with something original.
I’ve also been watching and reading stories that are in the same genre as mine, to get a feel for what amount of detail is needed to really bring the world to life. Like, how do you write awesome fight scenes? What’s involved in magic? What kind of weapons do they use, what kind of terrain is there, what are they fighting? I outlined some of that stuff, but not enough to make it really stand out.
Essentially, I didn’t outline enough. Which is crazy, cause I spent like 2 weeks on just the outline!
Moving forward, I will try to throw in tidbits of detail to really bring the story to life, and hopefully the story will take on a life of its own.