Alrighty writing world, good news – for those doing NaNoWriMo, there is only 4 days left of insanity before time’s up. This means that this is the last NaNo post I will be doing for the year and we will be going back to standard My Literary Quest topics.
Yay!
Ideally you NaNo’s out there are pulling into the final stretch and are in the resolution phase of your story. If you are, all that needs to be done is tying up all the loose ends and giving your characters their “Happy Ever After.” Or, if you write like me, rounding things out so your readers don’t want to punch you in the face.
However, if you are any bit like me you might have fallen into one of the following two problems.
1. You’re behind and still working through the climax. Good thing this is a holiday weekend. You might be able to squeeze in a handful of hours here and there that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Think early mornings and late nights and anytime in between. You might need to sacrifice some of the holiday fun and, say, not watch football or take that post turkey coma-like nap. Even short 15-minute writing dashes can net you extra wordage.
2. You’ve finished the story but you need more words to make your goal. Breathe – this is easier to fix than you think. Start with analyzing your story, does your main character pass through the try/fail cycle at least three times? If he only fails once before achieving his goal then the goal was too easy for him. Add another failure. That should get you several more thousand words right there.
Other ways you can sneak in more words is to make sure that you have taken a moment to describe important people and places as they are introduced. One of the biggest faults of most first drafts, especially those written on the fly, is that they lack description. Go back and plug more in.
Congratulations – even if you haven’t met your goal of 50,000 words you have done far more than you would have done had you not written at all and that’s worthy of praise! Here’s to you for giving it your best shot.
My Literary Quest 