NaNoWriMo 2011 – The Body on the Floor
Posted on October 16, 2011
With November approaching, I thought about giving NaNoWriMo a miss this year. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and the goal for participants is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words over the course of November. I participated in 2009 and 2010, and won in 2009.
Even though all the writing is supposed to take place during November, authors are allowed (encouraged, even) to do some work in advance. This includes coming with characters, places, plot, and whatnot. Until yesterday, I didn’t have any ideas for a plot, and I wasn’t really pushing myself to develop one. Then, one came to mind. Thus far, the story premise is only a couple of paragraphs I wrote to keep track of the idea:
A cell of terrorists (a la Red Army Faction, or maybe some drug dealers) go to set up a safe house in an old abandoned warehouse, when they find a dead body in the middle of the floor. The story goes through the thoughts of the individual members and what each of them thinks they should do about the body.
Do they leave it and not tell anyone? Do they leave it and call the police anonymously? Will they have to find another safe house? How quickly can they do that? How will it affect their operation? How do they notify their contacts if they move? Did the person have a family? Can they move the body somewhere? How long will it be before someone comes looking for the body? Will someone look for the body? Who was this person? Will they be missed?
If one is planning an audacious mission (for good or ill), finding a corpse on the floor of your supposedly safe location would lead to all sorts of problems. Some people might look at it as a bad omen. It would sap morale and inevitably lead to second guessing. How would these people handle it?
Anyway, I think it might be good for 50,000 words, so I’m planning on doing NaNo this year. (Maybe I can get Siri to do dictation).
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Tagged with: NaNoWriMo, The Body on the Floor
NaNoWriMo
Posted on September 27, 2009
Last year, one of the bloggers I follow signed up for something called NaNoWriMo, which I had never heard of. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s a contest where participants try to write a novel during the month of November.
This is the 11th year of NaNoWriMo it gets bigger every year. The goal seems simple – write a story of more than 50,000 words. According to the FAQs, anyone who writes 50,000 words is declared a winner, and there are no prizes other than a certificate (as a PDF file). However, the real prize is the satisfaction of having written 50,000 words of a story. That doesn’t mean the novel is good, or coherent, or publishable, or interesting, but it is over 50,000 words, so that’s gotta count for something ;-) Apparently, 50,000 words is about 175 pages, which doesn’t seem very long IMHO, but according to Wikipedia some novels around 50,000 words include The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Brave New World, and The Great Gatsby.
If one is writing according to the rules of NaNoWriMo, writing on the novel begins on November 1st and ends at midnight local time on November 30th or 50,000 words later, whichever happens first. The author can do research, make notes, and do whatever before November, but the novel writing must begin in November. They encourage people not to worry so much about editing (that is what December is for), but to concentrate on getting the words out and reaching the 50,000 word mark. It’s more about quantity than quality, but the story might be a diamond in the rough. It can be polished into something better.
For me, I’ve got some rough ideas and some basic characters floating around in my head, so maybe they can be coaxed into 50,000 words or more. We’ll see what November brings.
