The craziness that is NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is finished for another year. For everyone who participated during the writing frenzy to get 50K words in thirty days, I want to offer a heartfelt congratulations. You did what many only dream about doing.

If you crossed the 50K mark, you are a winner by anyone's yardstick! Well done. Some of you may be in this boat and are thinking, "What next?" Throughout this blog I will give you some tips on the next steps of your process. Stay tuned.

If you fall in the group of writers who started with high hopes, but didn't make it over the finish line, never fear, you tried, and whether you have 2K words or 20K or more, you have more words now than you had on October 31. You did what you could. Well done. 

The Next Step

If you haven't finished your story (whether you passed the 50K mark or not) the next step is completing this draft. Conclude the story. Resist the urge to edit or revise your work at this point in your writing. As most writers will tell you, starting something is a lot easier than completion. Many writers have oodles of unfinished drafts. An unfinished draft won't go anywhere. Take what you learned about writing during the last month and keep on going.

For those who needed 50K to complete a novel--you arrived at the end of your story in 50K--the next step is to pat yourself on the back and put your work aside for a little while. Yes! You get a vacation--at least from this story. My suggestion is to start another project, short story, another novel, poem, or whatever your muse is urging you to write. You created some writing habits during Nano that you can now carry over into your writing life.

Whereever you find yourself at the beginning of December, good luck with your NEXT STEP.

Overwriting is a pitfall many beginning writers fall into. It’s easy to do. You the writer possess this great story scene in your head and you want to convey it to the reader. The movie playing in your mind deserves to be told in detail, you think. And you are correct. The problem comes when a writer puts every detail in including stage directions and minute descriptions. Writing is called an art for a reason. Knowing how much detail to add and what to leave out is where the artist can paint the word picture.

Consider these examples.

    He felt angry and shouted, “Get out of my house!”

    His angry words must have hurt her. She felt the tears fall down her face and she stood up and ran out of the house.

Doesn’t the dialogue convey the anger, especially if he’s shouting it? The writer could simply cut felt angry and. The second paragraph can be pared down to solve several issues: overwriting, point of view shift and telling vs. showing.

    He shouted, “Get out of my house!”

    Tears streaming, she stood and ran. The door slammed behind her.

Writing two sentences where one does the trick, is overwriting. By eliminating this in your prose, you’ll find your writing becomes cleaner and leaner.

If you can include a fresh description that does double duty, your writing will achieve nuances and add character and color without seeming overdone.

Consider this example from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. He does a brilliant job of conveying a description, sensory expression and the speaker’s attitude in one short sentence.

In your revisions can you find places where you’ve used too many words to convey your meaning?  

I’d love to hear your comments. Contact me here or email me at authorsassistant@hotmail.com.

Keep writing, and remember to enjoy wherever you are on the journey.

Linear writing deals with plotting your novel. The sequence of events happens in order, most of the time, but that doesn't mean your book needs to appear linearly. If a book is too linear, it reads predictably and even when writing formulaic stories such as mysteries or romances, you can keep your reader guessing by inserting some unpredictable action or subplot.

By adding in other characters who emphasize the themes of your story, you can add depth. This serves a double purpose by also adding tension. If you're writing a romance, for example, you have the couple together then apart, then bring them together perhaps a couple of times before the happily ever after ending. If you add in a subplot with separate characters who also have a relationship you highlight the romance angle and delay the reader's satisfaction of finding out what happens next. The tease is most always going to keep your reader turning the page as long as it eventually pays off.

Sometimes during the early drafts a writer might not be able to see where all the clues and tension can be instilled for greatest effect, but can address this during revisions.

A good editor will be able to assess your story to give you feedback on where you can improve this angle of your writing.

Questions? Comments? Leave it here or email me at authorsassistant@hotmail.com.

Writing is a step by step process. Whatever step you're on, enjoy, learn and celebrate!