Day #23: Untwist

This weekend was a small creative burst filled with fake moss, pine cones, and make-believe fairy bottles. The story I’m going to write next month is coming along. I used the process I’m sharing a few times but the novel that I wanted to write always felt like there was something missing. When that happensContinue reading “Day #23: Untwist”

Day #22: Finding Your Voice

I hope you had time to read through all the pages you’ve been working on this month. It might be the weekend and a little late in the afternoon but that doesn’t mean our prep work is done. We are still on day #22. A longer amount of time to work on your stories meanContinue reading “Day #22: Finding Your Voice”

Day #21: Reading Day

Today we get to take a little break for Preptober. Hold back those pens and keyboards, I know some may want to keep going but pausing is important. A break means that we’re going to take out our folder and read through all the contents. Yes, today is a reading day and that’s all we’reContinue reading “Day #21: Reading Day”

Day #20: What’s Missing?

I hope a second day of working on the first paragraphs of your chapters helped inspire and get you thinking about your novel. The pages in your folder should be growing in size and it’s time for us to add in more layers to our story. Day #20 is all about asking the question ofContinue reading “Day #20: What’s Missing?”

Day #19: First Paragraphs Repeat

When I tell everyone not to go overboard on the day’s exercise and exhaust yourselves, it’s because there’s a plan for every day this month. I hope you didn’t wear your fingers to the bone yesterday because we’re going to continue the same exercise. Day #19 is going to continue first paragraphs for our chapters.Continue reading “Day #19: First Paragraphs Repeat”

Day #18: First Paragraphs

I can feel the fingers itching out there as we go through Preptober together. We’ve been tackling one small exercise a day and then putting the pieces away. Well, today we get to do more typing than our previous days. Day #18 is First Paragraph Day. That means that we get to take out ourContinue reading “Day #18: First Paragraphs”

Day #17: Developing Relationships

Driving down the streets with colors of gold, deep red, and browns I gripped the wheel tighter as an idea came up to me. Living in Minnesota and starting my blog I didn’t just want to watch other people’s feeds of things to do up here. So, I filled up my facebook events calendars withContinue reading “Day #17: Developing Relationships”

Day #16: Developing Characters

Writers are strange creatures. We write novels in reverse and if anyone looked in our search history, they might be worried about us. We look up all kinds of strange facts, stories, and CSI like details. Our heads are filled with fantasy worlds, creatures, and sci-like inventions that don’t exist in our world right now.Continue reading “Day #16: Developing Characters”

Day #15: Tension

Since we worked on our relationships yesterday, it only seems fitting that we create some more tension throughout our story. We’re building the layers into our novel and this is another way to add interest to our characters and the places where we have our main points. I could use an onion reference but IContinue reading “Day #15: Tension”

Day #13: Get the Main Points In Detail

Is the thickness of your Preptober folder growing every day? These 31 days of exercises should help you form your story, break the steps of writing a novel down into bite size pieces, and keep you focused so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by what you’re trying to do. Today, we’re taking one more stepContinue reading “Day #13: Get the Main Points In Detail”

Day #12: Unplotting

We’re already on Day #12 of Preptober and we’ve been adding all the elements of novel into our folder. Think of yesterday as a teaser for today. We also added and now it’s time to narrow down our ideas. Today, it’s time to take a look at that outline that we put away because we’reContinue reading “Day #12: Unplotting”

Day #11: Crazy with Interest

Now that Monday is over, it’s time to let those pens loose. Remember the day we worked on our outline? Well it’s time to have a crazy day. Take your plot and make all kinds of crazy alternatives. I’m having you do this now so that you get it out of your system. A writerContinue reading “Day #11: Crazy with Interest”