Using Meditation to Leave a No-Write-Rut Behind

When Frodo told Gandalf he would rather not have to deal with all the hardship of taking the one ring to Mordor, Gandalf’s response was, “So do all who live to see such times…All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” 

Living through a pandemic, forest fires, murder hornets, climate change, and political division is not likely something any of us would wish to endure. But we should take Gandalf’s advice and decide what to do with the time we have.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably decided to use at least some of your time to write. 

But if it’s been hard to put pen to paper during the pandemic, if you’ve found yourself in a rut, how do you pull yourself out? 

In our last post, we took the path of least resistance and watched some inspirational videos to get the creative juices flowing. But that was just the first step. In this post, we’ll help you leave that rut—COVID-inspired or not—behind. 

What if You’ve Never Meditated Before?

We get it. New activities can be difficult to start because…what if it doesn’t go well? What if you’re doing it wrong? 

The good thing about meditation is there is no wrong, not really. It’s one of those things that’s an art and a science, and you can start small. As long as you’re relaxed and mindful, and forgiving of yourself when your mind wanders (because it will), you can achieve a meditative state. 

But if you’re a total newb when it comes to going zen, don’t worry. We’re going to guide you through some meditation exercises for both the amateur and the meditation master.

Meditation Exercise 1: Breathe it Out

Sometimes all it takes is to breathe. Really breathe—mindfully. Breathing is unique because our bodies will do it on their own, but we can also regulate it. Can you think of anything else our bodies do that are both involuntary and voluntary? We can’t.

The benefit of being mindful about breathing is you will continue to breathe regardless (unless you’re holding your breath), so you can rely on it happening. But by focusing on your breathing, you become mindful of what’s happening in your body. 

This exercise is good regardless of your expertise with meditation. The goal is to focus on your breathing only. If other thoughts crop up—and they will—acknowledge them, let them go, and take another breath to refocus on what’s happening in your body.

  1. Make sure you have somewhere comfortable to sit or recline. You want your muscles to be able to relax. If you’ve never sat in a lotus position, don’t start right now—you can meditate without contorting yourself. (If you can sit in a lotus position, you have our admiration!)
  2. Make sure your environment is quiet. (If it’s not, a pair of noise cancelling headphones or a white noise machine can help.)
  3. Keep your eyes open, but let them un-focus at a comfortable middle distance.
  4. Breathe in through your nose for a count of three. Breathe out through pursed lips for a count of six. If you’ve meditated before, focus on how the breath feels entering and exiting your body. If this is your first meditation, just focus on counting and breathing. Repeat twice.
  5. Breathe in through your nose for a count of four. Breathe out through pursed lips for a count of eight. Repeat twice.
  6. Breathe in through your nose for a count of five. Breathe out through pursed lips for a count of ten. Repeat twice.
  7. Repeat step 5.
  8. Repeat step 4.
  9. Congratulate yourself for meditating! How did it feel? Write a brief reflection or journal entry about your experience. What did you notice? Was it challenging or easy? Did you like it? Why or why not? Will you try it again?

This first exercise can help you get used to meditation. It can help clear your mind. It can help you focus on the present, on your body, instead of what’s been going on out in the world—or what might go on out in the world. It takes your mind off your writing.

Wait, that sounds counterproductive, doesn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be getting our minds on our writing?

If you’re in a rut, thinking about the thing that put you there isn’t going to help you out. Have faith in yourself, in the process, and in meditation. 

When you’ve stopped thinking each day about how you should have been writing through the pandemic, you’re ready for the next exercise.

Meditation Exercise 2: Affirmation Mantra

What’s an affirmation? You may already know, but in case you don’t, an affirmation is a statement of positivity about yourself and/or your abilities. Sometimes it’s designed to express gratitude or attract more of what you desire. An example of an affirmation might be: 

I have the right to call myself a writer.

It’s brief, positive, and easy to remember. 

Now what about a mantra? A mantra may be repeated during meditation to help the mind focus on the ideas presented by the mantra. So if you’ve guessed that you’re going to create an affirmation and repeat it—either aloud or silently while you meditate—then you’re right on track. 

Without further ado, here’s your second meditation exercise:

  1. Create your affirmation. Make sure it’s positive and brief. If you’re having trouble, try focusing on something you’re grateful for, or a feeling or thought you desire more of.
  2. Perform the first meditation exercise to help you reach what’s known as a liminal state. Basically, it’s that place where you can be mindful.
  3. Repeat your affirmation mantra at least ten times.
  4. Perform the first meditation again.

You can repeat this as often as you need to. You can write new affirmation mantras to work with as well. 

The next exercise will help you find inspiration, hopefully, to carry you out of your writing rut.

Meditation Exercise 3: Visualization

Visualization is slightly different from meditation in the same way that a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle’s not always a square. What? A math reference? In a blog about writing? 

But it’s true—visualization requires meditation skills but you can meditate without performing a visualization. So what’s a visualization?

When you visualize, you use your imagination to create a spatial setting and the objects in it. Sound familiar? Visualization should be easy for writers because it’s like creating a setting in a story. 

For this exercise, you’re going to perform the first meditation exercise and then visualize the following:

You’re standing in a bookstore. It’s early morning or close to closing, so the store isn’t terribly busy. You wander over to the bookshelf of your genre and scan the spines. You run your fingers over them and take in the letters. Note the colors, the fonts, and their sizes. As you continue to peruse the shelf, you see a book given precedence.  You can see the whole front cover. On the cover is your name, the title of your book, fitting imagery, and blurbs. There are several copies of your book in stock, but it’s also clear that some have sold already. Visualize yourself picking up the book. You hold it in both hands. It’s a hardcover. You let the book gently fall open to a random page. You raise the book to your nose and inhale. You can smell the pages, the glue, the ink—that new book smell which is as aromatic and pleasing as the old book smell. You hold the pages in your hand and thumb through them, letting pages fall onto the other half of the book. Gently, you close the cover. On the back you see a description of your book, more blurbs, a barcode and ISBN, and your photo with a brief bio. You hold in your hands the culmination of your creative efforts. You feel a swell of happiness warm your entire being. Like the climax of a story, you feel like this moment is one you questioned the possibility of many times, but at the same time, it feels inevitable. It feels like no matter your path to publication, you were always going to finish this story. You were always going to complete it, and every hurdle along the way only increases your joy in having done so. You carefully replace your book on the bookstore shelf. 

You can adjust this visualization to be more specific to your goals as a writer. The point is to sense yourself having met your goal while acknowledging the struggles along the way, accepting them, and realizing they are a part of the process.

This rut you’re in—it’s just one hurdle in a long run. When you reach your goal, you’ll be able to look back and see that every step brought you to that moment. The purpose of the visualization is to feel that end point.

How’d it Go?

We’d love to hear about your meditation sessions, if you’re willing to share! Did you try these exercises? Did you try others? There are plenty of writing-related meditations available and many of them are free. We encourage you to keep up the meditation habit, even when you start writing again.

Author & Author Accelerator Certified book coach Margaret McNellis holds an MFA in fiction, an M.A. in English & creative writing, and a B.A. in art history. She writes historical fiction for adult and young adult readers. Her debut YA novel, THE RED FLETCH, will be released on 9/18/21. Margaret’s short fiction has been published in several markets, including Assignment Magazine, where she was the 2019 student fiction contest winner. Margaret loves the beach when it’s empty, the forest in the fall, blasting Mozart’s piano sonatas, and baking bread.

5 Inspirational Videos to Help You Gear Up to Write Your Book

Writing a book is no mean feat. If it were easy, everyone would do it, right? If you’re thinking of participating in JuNoWriMo 2021, that’s fantastic. It really is. Deciding to write a book is exciting, and making that decision is the biggest step because it’s the first. Most people don’t even decide to write a book.

That beautiful commitment to yourself and to your story can fuel you through the whole drafting process…but why go it alone? We’ve sourced five inspirational videos to help you gear up to write your book. Over the next [x weeks/days] we will share some additional resources to help you shake off the doldrums of the pandemic and prepare to launch into a month of storytelling.

No. 1: When You’re Seeking Creativity…

Watch Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) talk about creative genius.

No. 2: When You Need to Choose…

Writing a book is scary. But that doesn’t mean you have to let your brain keep you from trying.

No. 3: When You Need to Find Your Passion…

Do you love to write? If you’re feeling like you’ve lost your way a little, this video is for you!

No. 4: When You Need to Think Outside the Box…

If you’re feeling trapped by your ideas, by your story, watch this video to step outside of the norm and expand your creativity.

No. 5: When You Stumble or Others Put You Down…

When we strive, we inevitably experience setbacks and failures along the way. When you need to feel able to continue on despite feeling like everything is wrong, watch this video.

Final Thoughts

Not all inspiration has to be on the topic of writing. If these videos don’t help you feel inspired to write, watch an inspirational sports video. If that doesn’t help, look for videos by more people who have succeeded even though the odds were stacked against them. Look for the people who could have given up, who almost gave up, but who didn’t give up. 

Inspiration is everywhere. Hopefully this list of videos will get you started on your way to preparing to participate in JuNoWriMo. 

Author & Author Accelerator Certified book coach Margaret McNellis holds an MFA in fiction, an M.A. in English & creative writing, and a B.A. in art history. She writes historical fiction for adult and young adult readers. Her debut YA novel, THE RED FLETCH, will be released on 9/18/21. Margaret’s short fiction has been published in several markets, including Assignment Magazine, where she was the 2019 student fiction contest winner. Margaret loves the beach when it’s empty, the forest in the fall, blasting Mozart’s piano sonatas, and baking bread.

Train for JuNo Like You Would a 5K – Stepping Up Your Writing Game

Could you go from couch potato to running a 5K? Nah, neither could we. No judgment. You know what the 5K of the writing world is? Writing a novel in a month. Well, that might actually be more like a marathon, but we’re going to go with 5K because it’s less intimidating.

But in the same way you couldn’t go from Netflix-and-snack to running several miles in one get-off-the-couch move, we don’t expect you to go from not writing to putting down 50,000 words in a month. 

Maybe you used our list of inspirational videos and meditation exercises to pull yourself out of a writing rut—possibly even a pandemic-induced writing rut. Either way, good for you! You should take a moment to give yourself the proverbial pat on the back. Or take a rewarding trip to the bookstore (safely, with masks and social distancing). 

But then come back to your computer or notebook and realize there’s more prep work to do. In this post, we’ll give you a four-week plan to get up to writing 1,667 words a day (the number you need daily for 30 days to hit 50,000 words).

Week One

For the first week, you’re going to aim to get up to 100 words a day. That may seem paltry, but don’t worry—we’ll be turning up the heat soon, and before you know it, you’ll be in prime shape for JuNoWriMo 2021.

For each day, you can write a new micro-story or work toward a single, longer story. Here’s the plan:

Day 1: Write 25 words. No sweat, right?

Day 2: Write 30 words. Still pretty small.

Day 3: Write 45 words. Oh we’re getting closer to elevator-pitch length!

Day 4: Write 65 words. You’re more than halfway there!

Day 5: Write 80 words. So close!

Day 6: Write 95 words.

Day 7: Write 100 words! Way to go! Celebrate somehow.

Week Two

Last week was a nice experience of wading back into writing. This week, we’re going to aim to get you to 500 words by the end. Same rules apply: You can write a different bit of micro-fiction each day, or work toward a longer story.

Day 1: Write 105 words. Already writing more than last week!

Day 2: Write 150 words.

Day 3: Write 225 words.

Day 4: Write 275 words. More than halfway there!

Day 5: Write 350 words.

Day 6: Write 435 words. You’re so close!

Day 7: Write 500 words. You did it! Celebrate bigger than you did last week.

Week Three

This week’s goal is to get you above 1,000. Why make such a big jump in week three? Two reasons: The more days you write closer to goal, the easier it will be in June—and we don’t want flagging motivation in week four to stop you from reaching 1,667 words a day.

Same rules as weeks one and two. Ready? Set? Write!

Day 1: Write 505 words.

Day 2: Write 600 words.

Day 3: Write 700 words. A big jump, but you can handle it! We believe in you.

Day 4: Write 775 words. You’re halfway through the week, and more than halfway past your daily word goal!

Day 5: Write 850 words.

Day 6: Write 920 words. Less than 100 to go to reach your daily goal!

Day 7: Write 1,000 words. Woohoo! You did it! You’re so close to writing the daily minimum to reach 50k in 30 days! Do something really nice for yourself.

Week Four

Here we are in the home stretch. You’ve done really well. There’s not much more work to do now—you’ll just be working up to adding those final 667 words per day. You’re already writing 1,000 words per day, so this should be a walk in the park or a piece of cake or whatever reward-based idiom you want to use.

Same rules. Here we go!

Day 1: Write 1,001 words. You’ve got this. It’s just one more word than you wrote yesterday.

Day 2: Write 1,055 words.

Day 3: Write 1,225 words.

Day 4: Write 1,350 words. You’re more than halfway to this week’s goal! Keep chugging along.

Day 5: Write 1,450 words.

Day 6: Write 1,550 words. You’re so close. Can you feel it?

Day 7: Write 1,667 words. You made it! You’re totally ready for the vigor of writing 50K in 30 days now. Do something super fun to celebrate!

You Made It…What Next?

How does it feel to be writing 1,667 words a day? We always knew you had it in you. By the end of this challenge, you’ve written 17,128 words, which is almost 35% of a JuNoWriMo challenge. Add that to what you’ll write in June and that’s 67,128 words. At an average of 250 words per page (standard for many novels), that would be a book of almost 270 pages. Not too shabby, right?

Best of all, you’re now writing 1,667 words a day. If you timed this right, you can just keep going at that pace through June. If not, you’ll end up with even more stories or words written—and that’s not a bad thing, either.

Good luck and happy writing for JuNoWriMo 2021!

Author & Author Accelerator Certified book coach Margaret McNellis holds an MFA in fiction, an M.A. in English & creative writing, and a B.A. in art history. She writes historical fiction for adult and young adult readers. Her debut YA novel, THE RED FLETCH, will be released on 9/18/21. Margaret’s short fiction has been published in several markets, including Assignment Magazine, where she was the 2019 student fiction contest winner. Margaret loves the beach when it’s empty, the forest in the fall, blasting Mozart’s piano sonatas, and baking bread.

The Pre-JuNoWriMo Character Development Series, Part 4: Character Family Trees

The very first time I tried NaNoWriMo, I found out about it and joined mere days before the challenge. I didn’t prep anything save to decide I wanted to write Fantasy. I thought, for some reason, that Fantasy would be the easiest genre to write because I could make up my own rules. Having read Tolkien before, I don’t know why on earth I imagined this would make the task easier.

I managed to do some halfway decent worldbuilding on the fly, but aside from my two main characters, the others were mere afterthoughts—place holders for actions and dialogue that needed to move my two protagonists forward. (Yeah, because I also decided two main characters was a great idea for my first ever novel. Maybe I suffered from temporary insanity back in ’08 brought on by the recession? I’m running with that.)

Anyway, I reached a part in the novel where I didn’t even have a name for a character, so she got the label [PM1] for “protagonist’s mom.” Talk about an identity crisis.

Let me fast-forward a few years to when I was doing some personal genealogical research. I realized just how fascinating it is to think about where we come from, generations back. Take what I say next with a grain of salt because I haven’t verified it by going to England seeing the records for myself, but I managed to trace one line of my family tree back to the time of Alfred the Great. Stories came to mind for all those individuals—regardless of whether I’m actually their descendant. One of them helped inspire my protagonist for my current work-in-progress.

Understanding his family tree and how those people moved in the world helped me understand him better, which is why this week, in my fourth and final pre-JuNoWriMo character development post, I’m recommending you make your character’s family tree.

For Family Tree Newbs

If you’ve never made a family tree before, the process can seem daunting. But, if you take it one step at a time, I don’t doubt that you’ll have fun! There are a number of programs and apps you can use for this sort of thing, but as many of them actually link your tree to real people, I’m going to suggest you go with old-fashioned pencil and paper for this exercise. You can always take a photo of it if you want to store it digitally.

So, I’ll talk you through my process for making a family tree. By all means if you come across a different method, especially those recommended by actual genealogists, feel free to follow that guidance if you like. For this exercise, it doesn’t really matter how you create the family tree—just that you create it.

How I Make Character Family Trees

I start out by writing my character’s name in a square. Seems easy, no? I also write their birthdate. I draw a line to the sides to connect them to any siblings—circles for gals, triangles for guys. I know, in our progressive-thinking world it seems horrible to differentiate by gender. I’m a feminist, I promise. But if you’re making a large family tree, some kind of pictorial distinction can help. If you don’t want to use these shapes, or you don’t want to separate by gender but by something else, please be my guest!

I draw a vertical line to my protagonist’s parents, who are connected by a double line to signify marriage. If they had the children in the branch below theirs out of wedlock, I put a slash through that double line. You can already see how I tell a story with simple lines, names, and birthdates. I continue the process, moving up the family tree until I’ve gone back as far as I feel I must.

Even though I went back about 1200 years on my own family tree, I didn’t go back so far on my protagonist’s. But, his family are descended from the aristocracy, so I did go back several generations at least on his paternal side, since that’s how surnames are passed in British history. If your protagonist is from a matriarchal society, you’d want to follow their maternal line.

Okay, one more step to go—a special step I take for character family trees. For each person on the tree, I write one or two notes about who they are as a person, what they did in their life, and/or any metaphors I want to attach to them. This is a ginormous help to me in my drafting process, especially if I have many characters to keep track of.

Final Thoughts

Have you ever made a family tree for your characters? Is this an exercise you plan to try this year? If you’ve been a pantser in the past, have you thought about becoming a planner this year, or do you thrive on the spontaneity of going into a 50K in a month challenge completely uncertain of what you’ll write?

I’d love to know! Check in on the comments or catch me on Twitter! Happy pre-writing and writing!

Margaret McNellis has been volunteering with JuNoWriMo for years. She holds an MA in English & Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction. Her WIP is a historical novel set in the 17th century. Margaret’s short fiction has appeared in Fictitious Magazine, See Spot Run, The Penman Review, The Copperfield Review, and Dual Coast Magazine. To check out some of her fiction and poetry, visit her website. You can also connect with her on Twitter

The Pre-JuNoWriMo Character Development Series, Part 3: Personality Tests

In the previous instalments of this series, we looked at tools to help you create characters. This week, I want to shift gears and discuss how to develop characters that have already sparked. This exercise is ideal for when you know a few things about a character, or maybe you just have their vibe, and you’re looking for ways to bring them into a story.

This week, we’re all about personality…and more specifically, testing that personality. There are tons of personality tests out there, such as Myers-Briggs, IQ, and EQ tests. Some have image-based questions, where you choose your favorite image, and this reveals something innate about who you are. Others ask you questions that you answer on a sliding scale, for example.

For the purposes of this week’s discussion, I’m going to use 16 Personalities. When it comes to personality tests for characters, this is my personal favorite. I’m going to guide you through how I took this test for my protagonist, and what was revealed about him. It’ll be a treat for us all to see if the results match up with what I wrote for his character profile/study.

I’ve not used this tool for him yet. Let’s see what happens!

For questions that aren’t historically appropriate to a 17th-century fella, I either chose the neutral position or imagined the historically-accurate version of the question if possible.

As you can see, I filled out every page of the 16 Personalities test. I tried to free James from my input and go with my first instinct for him. I didn’t want to shape the results of the test at all, especially as this is a character I have already developed.

The Results

James came out with an ISTJ-T personality type. According to 16 Personalities, he is:

  • Introverted
  • Observant
  • Thinking
  • Judging
  • Turbulent

I’m not sure if I’d consider him turbulent over assertive, but he was pretty close to a 50/50 on that. As for the other key traits, I’d say they’re spot on with how I’ve already developed him.

What follows this result is eight pages of in-detail reading. I’m only going to show and discuss two of those pages. Mostly, this is because this blog post would be about thirty pages long if I got into some of the other results pages—but if you use 16 Personalities for your character (or yourself), I recommend reading each results page because there’s plenty of insightful information available there.

I’d say of these strengths, the only one I’m not so sure my character has in spades is calmness. He’s not a total loose cannon but he does have a short fuse.

16 Personalities really hit the mark with James’s weaknesses. These aren’t his only weaknesses, but they certainly encompass the most important ones—especially his stubbornness early in the book and his insensitivity later in the book.

Final Thoughts

The nice thing about having these tests available on the internet for free is that I don’t have to hunt down my old college psychology textbook. I hope you’ll take the chance to poke through some of the tests available out there and see which ones can help you develop your characters.

Also, sometimes I get ideas for ways I can challenge my characters just from reading through the results.

Check in next week for one more character development exercise to help you prepare for next month’s challenge!

Margaret McNellis has been volunteering with JuNoWriMo for years. She holds an MA in English & Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction. Her WIP is a historical novel set in the 17th century. Margaret’s short fiction has appeared in Fictitious Magazine, See Spot Run, The Penman Review, The Copperfield Review, and Dual Coast Magazine. To check out some of her fiction and poetry, visit her website. You can also connect with her on Twitter

The Pre-JuNoWriMo Character Development Series, Part 2: Character Resumés

Last week, I walked you through creating character profiles designed to help you get to know your character. But not everyone has the time or desire to write a 10-page profile, so this week I have another suggestion for how you can get to know your characters (and their story).

Write their resumés.

I know writing a resumé can sound like a drag, but I promise I have more fun writing them for my characters than myself, with all the satisfaction that accompanies finishing this task.

The only tricky part is for authors who are writing stories that don’t exist in our modern, contemporary, tangible Earth sort of world. Being that my own novel is historical fiction, I’m going to show you that it’s possible. I’ll write James’s from the start of the Pequot War, the main external conflict of my novel.

My Protagonist’s Resumé

James Stanworth

Fort Saybrooke

Connecticut

SUMMARY

James is skilled in negotiations and foreign languages. Skills include reading, writing, diplomacy, animal husbandry with an affinity for horses, carpentry, swimming, and archery. With experience as a trapper, trader, and interpreter, James is a natural leader and possesses a growth mindset. He’s an intrepid traveler, having crossed the Atlantic on the Bonaventurein 1633.

OBJECTIVE

To become an interpreter for the colonies of New England, to continue developing deeper knowledge of both the languages and cultures of First Nations within those colonies and foster a mutually beneficial relationship between settlers and First Nations. To own and run a trading post.

EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE

Assistant Trapper and Trader to Jasper Peterson, The New World, 1633-1635

  • Learned Iroquois and Algonquin tongues
  • Hunted both deer and beaver
  • Carved a canoe out of a cedar trunk
  • Traded with First Nations and other settlers

Contract Negotiator, Colony of Connecticut, 1635-1637

  • Negotiated land deals between Governor John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut and First Nations
  • Translated contract documents from English into Algonquin languages

Interpreter, Fort Saybrooke, 1637-Present

  • Negotiates on behalf of Lieutenant Lionel Abner
  • Reports regularly to Governor John Winthrop Jr. about progress in preventing war between First Nations and settlers
  • Liaises with Dutch military allies and trade competitors

Discussion

James was not formally educated for reasons that will be revealed in my book, even though he comes from a wealthy family. But his father did impart him with the skills to read and write, which serve him well throughout the book and become some of his most relied-upon abilities. However, because he didn’t go away to school, I chose to omit an “EDUCATION” section.

But you can see how I’ve brought this 17th-century character into the modern world. I kept the dates of his employment honest to his time, but obviously he wouldn’t fill out a resumé. If I truly wanted to be as close to accurate as possible, he might have a referral letter from a previous employer—maybe Jasper Peterson (this name might change, by the way—I haven’t decided yet).

There are also some areas where I brought James’s personality through. He prefers hanging out with horses to hanging out with people, and he doesn’t like the Dutch all that much—but then, as a tradesman from England at a time when England will soon be at war with the Dutch, that’s not that hard to imagine. My point though is that you can bring your character to life through your choices in wording elements of their resume.

By the way, this exercise only took me about twenty minutes, which makes it a great pre-writing exercise.

As a bonus exercise, you can write a scene with your character interviewing for a job!

Margaret McNellis has been volunteering with JuNoWriMo for years. She holds an MA in English & Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction. Her WIP is a historical novel set in the 17th century. Margaret’s short fiction has appeared in Fictitious Magazine, See Spot Run, The Penman Review, The Copperfield Review, and Dual Coast Magazine. To check out some of her fiction and poetry, visit her website. You can also connect with her on Twitter

The Pre-JuNoWriMo Character Development Series, Part 1: Character Profiles

You’ve decided to write a novel…now what? Whether or not you intend to do some planning this month before JuNoWriMo kicks off, I’m going to help you start to think about ways to develop characters. It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or seasoned writer—thinking about characters in new or different ways can energize the development task and get you revved up to bring them to life come June.

For the next four weeks, I’ll guide you through four different approaches to character development. Hopefully one of them will strike a chord with you. I hope too that if you have any questions, you’ll comment on these posts.

This week, I’m going to start off with writing your character’s profile. If you want to write with authorial authority, you need to know as much about your character as possible. I’m going to encourage you not to write backstory.

You’re probably thinking, “What? No backstory? Did my character just hatch out of the ground fully formed?”

Well, maybe—maybe not. That’s really your call. But the main reason I’m going to encourage you to steer clear of backstories is they’re often arbitrarily created when they’re used as a starting point.

The Backstory Dilemma

Say you have a character who is a cop. You decide, based on that career, that the character’s father was a cop, too. Maybe, because when the father was alive, he was always working and never around, your character has issues trusting people.

It’s not terrible. But I think it’s going about things the wrong way. What if, instead, you decided that your character has trouble trusting people first? What if that leads you—when thinking of the father—to his having a second, secret family? Maybe halfway through the story, one of your character’s secret half-siblings commits a crime. Your cop character is blackmailed into making the charges go away in order to keep the secret and avoid embarrassment (for self, for the character’s mother, etc…).

Can you see how the second option—developed from a flaw and not a backstory—created both the backstory and some kind of struggle for the character?

If you start with backstory, you risk developing backwards and missing opportunities for conflict.

Character Profiles

What is a character profile, and how do you write one?

Let’s start with what a character profile isn’t. It’s not a listing of your character’s 100 favorites. It’s not a set of prompts to determine what your character looks like. All of that is superficial.

Rather, a character profile is an in-depth examination of what makes your character tick. When I wrote a profile for my protagonist, it came out at ten pages long. To be fair, one of the reasons it was ten pages was that I was doing it as a writing exercise, with the length dictated by my MFA mentor. But the freedom to take up that space allowed me to work out the less tangible qualities of my protagonist.

Character Profile Sections

For those writers who want a little more guidance, don’t worry; I won’t leave you high and dry. I’m going to break down for you how I approach character profiles, in hopes that it gives you a starting place. You don’t have to hold to it exactly if you don’t want to.

Also, for the sake of not worrying over differences in document formatting, let’s presume that you’re going to write a 3,000-word character profile (that’s 10 pages at about 300 words each). This is how I suggest breaking it down:

  • Character’s fears – 500 words
  • Character’s goals – 500 words
  • Character’s strengths – 500 words
  • Character’s weaknesses – 500 words
  • How the character will grow by the end of the book – 500 words
  • What/who hinders the character and how – 250 words
  • What/who helps the character and how – 250 words

Three thousand words in a character profile really isn’t all that much, when you break it down into parts. Take each part one at a time. You don’t have to write them in this order, either. I tend to, but I also believe in letting inspiration guide your energy output.

Using the Character Profile

When June 1 arrives and you’re about to start writing, are you going to take out this 10-page document and comb through it for quick facts? Probably not. That’s why I’m going to suggest just one more step:

After you write a character’s profile, make a list of the basic elements you determined in each section.

For example, if you write 500 words about why your character fears relying on others, his own mortality, and heights, you don’t want to comb through those pages to find those fears. Make a list of them for quick reference.

Final Thoughts

Do you have to create 10,000-word profiles for every major character in your novel? It’d be really nice to do that, if you have the time. But if not, start with your protagonist. I’ve found, when pressed for time, that just having my main character fleshed out like this can be enough for me to decide how other characters should be developed on the fly.

For example, if my character has trust issues, I know I’m going to put another in my protagonist’s path who either is or seems untrustworthy.

Give it a shot—write a character profile in the next week. Then, come back to try another way to develop your character pre-JuNoWriMo!

Margaret McNellis has been volunteering with JuNoWriMo for years. She holds an MA in English & Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction. Her WIP is a historical novel set in the 17th century. Margaret’s short fiction has appeared in Fictitious Magazine, See Spot Run, The Penman Review, The Copperfield Review, and Dual Coast Magazine. To check out some of her fiction and poetry, visit her website. You can also connect with her on Twitter

Jump-Start Your Novel Writing Month… Without Cheating by Larry Brooks

Mapping out your novel can help you avoid lulls in production. Check out tips from Larry Brooks on how to plan ahead and give your novel a “jump-start.”

According to the “rules” of National Novel Writing Month – no matter what month you undertake the work – there is nothing that prevents you from planning your novel out in advance.  Doing so – solidifying your concept and premise, and laying out the narrative expositional sequence itself – is perhaps the most useful and functional NaNoWriMo tip you can find.

Continue reading “Jump-Start Your Novel Writing Month… Without Cheating by Larry Brooks”

Writing a Premise

At some point, someone is going to ask you, “What’s your novel about?” If not in those exact words, you’re sure to field the question in some form. Do you have an answer? Sure, your novel is complex, full of characters, intricacies, histories, motivations, breakups, and makeups, but what would you write on the back cover of your published novel? What could you say in under 60 seconds to sell your story?

You need a premise. It’s key to staying on task, reminding yourself what you’re doing all month long, and letting others know what’s got you so focused/frazzled/frenzied.

What is a premise?

A premise is a one or two sentence (25-35 word) introduction to your character, his/her conflict, and the hook. It’s the foundation of your story. It works double time. You can use it to keep you on track, or as an elevator pitch to sell your completed novel.

Two ways to write your premise:

1. A present-tense statement. <— Best for planners

2. A “what-if”question. <— Best for pantsers

Whether you use the first or the second is completely up to you. The first option gives a much clearer guideline to follow while the second raises a question, but offers no answers. How open-ended would you like it to be? How much wiggle room would you like to have as you work on your novel? That will determine the best premise style for you.

What are the benefits of writing a premise?

1. A clear idea of what your novel is about. It forces you to break your idea down to its basic components, and ensures that you have the ever-important element that sets your novel apart from any other – the hook.
2. A guideline to refer to at any time during your novel writing process. As you write, many scenes will come to mind, and you will probably fall in love with most of them. Are they all relevant? Probably not. How will you know which ones are worth using? Your premise will make it painfully (or delightfully) obvious which scenes are necessary and which scenes can hit the road.
3. Takes less time and knowledge of the details than writing a summary. To write a summary, you need to know exactly what happens in your story. For a premise, you only need the bones. No meat necessary.
4. Less strict than a summary, leaving lots of room to move around. If you write your novel based on a summary, you will probably feel locked into some ideas and scenes that are present in the summary. There are specific occurrences that you’ll allude to in a summary. In a premise, again, it’s just the bones. You can dress it up however you want.
5. Having an elevator pitch ready. There’s no faster way to say what your novel is about. This is what agents, publishers, and readers are interested in. What is the purpose of your story?

Here are examples of premises using The Hunger Games:

1. Katniss takes her younger sister’s place as tribute in a fight-to-the-death reality television show. She not only fights her competitors, but herself, to win sponsor support, and stay alive.

2. What if 24 children are forced to leave their families to participate in a fight-to-the-death reality television show, only one coming out alive, to entertain the people of their world?

With a few planning days left before the 30 days of writing begin, it’s a great time to write your premise. Remember, you only need to know three things to do it. They are:
1. Your main character
2. Your character’s conflict.
3. The hook – What makes it different.

If you’re not quite ready to write your own premise, I highly recommend writing premises for your favourite books and movies. This will give you great practice in breaking hundred of pages or 2 hours down to their bare bones. For each premise your write, include the character, conflict, and hook, and stay between 25 and 35 words. Once you’ve done this for four or five books/movies, you should be ready to do it for your JuNoWriMo novel.

~

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Be a JuNoWriMo 2014 Featured Author
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Pre-JuNoWriMo Checklist
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Pre-JuNoWriMo Checklist

JuNoWriMo is just around the corner! Wow. April really flew right by us, and May is for all the planning, excitement, and preparation we like. Hopefully, you’re ready and feeling good about getting prepared. Here’s what you should get in place this month:

  • Premise – Who is your main character? What does he/she want? What stands in the way? Boil your entire novel down to one sentence.
  • Milestones – Know the turning points in your story.
  • Get to know your characters – You can search the internet for their faces, role play and take personality quizzes as them, and interview them. Be sure to figure out what they want, what they like and dislike, where they spend most of their time, where they live, how they react to various things, who they like and dislike, and what they look like.
  • Writing space – Choose nice, comfortable places where you are likely to feel inspired and be productive. Now is a good time to stake out those coffee shops, delis, libraries, and bookstores in your neighborhood to see which have the right noise-quiet balance, availability of writing fuel, and comfort.
  • Schedule – Some people have to juggle things around and/or squeeze in writing time here and there, 15 minutes at a time. That’s fine, but if possible, it’s nice to set a time to write every day. Routine is good!
  • Develop a plan for the worst – You may decide you don’t like your novel any more. You may get bogged down at work. You may question your ability to write a novel. You may get off track and end up writing something that’s not quite what you planned. You may not hit the daily goals you set for yourself. What would you do? All of those things can be scary/discouraging when they happen, but they can all be overcome with [cue dun-dun-dunnn] a plan! Make a list of your three worst JuNoWriMo nightmares, and decide how you’d deal with them. They won’t be so scary after that!
  • Research – If there’s anything you’re not sure of, look into it. If some parts of your novel absolutely must be factual, do the work now. Research can be quite the time-suck, especially when you’re just looking for a way to procrastinate. Protect your writing time. Keep June research-free by getting the facts in May.
  • Writing tools – Computer, netbook, Alphasmart, notebooks, binders, pens, pencils… Make sure they’re there and ready with lots of space/ink/storage for your word avalanche.
  • Support system – You need people in your corner! Tell people what you’re doing, but only the people who will encourage you and be positive about the challenge you’ve chosen to take on.
  • Meal planning – We highly recommend cooking lots of freezable meals or cutting deals with spouses. You probably won’t have much time for meal preparations, and when you have some, you’ll want to spend it writing, or in the forums.

Well, that about covers it! If you manage to get those things all sorted this month, you’ll be well on your way to a successful JuNoWriMo season. Be sure to look out for more blog posts which will help you out with accomplish some of the tasks mentioned here.