Making characters do stuff

It’s the end of the second day of NaNoWriMo and I'm about 700 words behind my word count goal. I have made a couple of illuminating discoveries, though. It’s clear to me now just how much I restrict myself during the creative process in an attempt to do things “well.” Even having given myself permission to write badly, the only goal being put words on page, I have found that I stop and sputter and reconsider. I fight myself. This alone is great motivation for me to continue, to seek that place of abandon. The creative process must, as some point, be wild and untamed and it troubles me that I’ve moved so far away from that place.

One of my biggest deficits as a writer is my tendency to become obsessed with the inner workings of my characters’ emotions, thoughts and memories at the exclusion of plot. I often forget to have them do things or sometimes even verbally interact with one another.

Writing for NaNoWriMo, with the intention of working quickly, has forced me into a whole new arena where action is the thing. I have to make my characters do stuff and I don’t have time to consider or weigh their actions. This is good for me and surprisingly strange-feeling. I do love, when I relax and let myself enjoy it, the anticipation of truly not knowing what my characters are going to do and say next. I did no prep work for this so it’s just unfolding as I go.

Tracy just asked me, "What's your novel about?"

I have no idea.

Comments

[Alison]

But isn't the whole point of NaNoWriMo to bust out 50,000 words, and damn the result? I've never had the courage to try it (I can barely wrap my brain around NaBloPoMo), but that's what I understood.

[JLK]

The biggest problem with my story is that I have restricted myself by the structure of the story. It's needlessly complicated, but the basic concept is that each "chapter" is an "episode" which lasts two pages in a specifically-formatted MSWord document. Every fifth "episode" ends with a bit of a cliffhanger or revelation. My biggest self-imposed stumbling block is that this story is a continuation of last year's story, which I never completely finished, and so I had to do that FIRST before anything else, just so I would know where I was in the overall structure. Why do I do this to myself? Because I am incapable of doing a straight narrative of just words flying out one after the other. But that's just me. Because I'm odd.

[Jennifer Mattox]

LL--I'm so impressed that you're doing this! Send in some samples for KaPow! if you'd like--we don't expect them to be polished yet but would love to read them!