Prepping for Novel November

NaNoWriMo is dead. It has a lot to do with their stance on AI (their website doesn't exist anymore, but here is an author that has their take on it). It really upset a lot of people, including members of Savio's Writer's Guild club. The use of AI is one of the few things that you can do to get removed from our club; it's in the bylaws (I included an AI generated image in a story pitch I presented last year before the rule was made and students were less than pleased).

The Writer's Guild is continuing to celebrate November anyway. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, many of our members (not all. Despite the name, the club is home to all sorts of creatives: artists, gamers, composers, as well as authors) will be attempting to write 50,000 word pieces during Novel November. It's a tough task. I've never done it before, but I will also give it a shot. The closest I ever got to a novel was in sophomore year English class. I wrote an 80 page novella. I don't remember much about it, but I've looked for years for a copy, but it's probably on a floppy disk somewhere.

You may recognize these as the Save icon.

I'm brushing off one of my several incomplete story ideas: By Any Other Name. We'll see how far I get. But you can't just leap from something into nothing and expect to get to 50,000 words. Here's the steps I've been taking:

Clarifying the setting. I had some trouble with earlier drafts by trying to do mix too many time periods and technologies together (I was going to do steampunk with green energy only). I might still come back to that at a later point, but for now I'll stick with mid 1800s. I've also been sketching out a map and making a list of cities.
Character sketches. I'm not an artist, so these are written sketches. This involves coming up with a list of features, motivations, and character traits so that I'll know how the characters will react in any given situation.
Outline. This is the most important part. I've got to know where the story is going. It's been in my head for at least 15 years (according to Google Docs) and I still don't know how it's going to end. I have a series of scenes, but the outline (hopefully) will draw them all together.

That's what I'm working on to prepare. I found a good article here that walks thorough some important things to consider.

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