Tag: NaNoWriMo

Preptober Prompts Day 1 – 2018

Preptober Prompts Day 1 – 2018

Preptober Prompts is finally here! Before we start there are a few things I want to go over to make sure things go smoothly, but I’ll only go over these once so you’re not reading them every day, lol.

  • It’s totally okay to use Preptober Prompts all on your own. I know I’ll be emphasizing the social aspect of things, but if you don’t want to share, that’s fine. One of my goals with this is for writers to connect with and support one another, but the main goal is to get your creative juices flowing and get you prepped for NaNo, so if sharing isn’t your thing that’s totally fine.
  • If you share Preptober Prompts on your own blog or social media, please link back to the original post and add the link to your post at the bottom of this post.
  • If you’re using Twitter, you can tag me (@RysaArcher) instead of linking back, and don’t forget to use #PreptoberPrompts.
  • Subscribe to the other hosting blogs (Of Rainy Days and Stardust Veins, Ozark Mountain Cailins, and Wildflowers and Cosmic Tea) so you’ll be immediately notified when the prompts go up for weeks 2-4!
  • You can find all of the prompt images here.

Character Introduction

This week’s category is characters, so take a minute today to briefly introduce your character before diving into the prompt. Coraline Seralen is the king’s Paladin, which means she’s extremely powerful and carries an enormous responsibility to protect her king and country. It’s a burden she doesn’t really want. She’d rather be a healer, helping and protecting people through medicine, since it’s more physical and manageable. Continue reading “Preptober Prompts Day 1 – 2018”

Camp NaNo Prep: The Outline

Camp NaNo Prep: The Outline

Camp NaNoWriMo Prep Series:

Part 1: The Idea

Part 2: The Characters

Part 3: The World

Want more on outlining methods? Check out this guest post by Rose Atkinson-Carter.

Before we start, here’s a disclaimer: I’m not an outliner. Well, not a hardcore outliner, at least. I do find that I do better when I have some sort of a framework to go off of, though, so in this post I’m going to just share with you a couple of methods I’ve used that have worked for me.

The Chapter-By-Chapter Outline

This is the method I used with The Heart of the Baenor, and it’s pretty simple. Continue reading “Camp NaNo Prep: The Outline”

Camp NaNo Prep: The World

Camp NaNo Prep: The World

Second to characters, the world is what generally catches a reader’s interest in a story, assuming it’s done well. The world affects the characters and outline (at least to some extent), so it shouldn’t be neglected.

Now, I speak as a speculative fiction writer, so all of my stories take place in worlds that are at least somewhat fictionalized (even my contemporary stories don’t adhere to specific real-life places most of the time), but this is at least somewhat applicable to all settings. Continue reading “Camp NaNo Prep: The World”

Camp NaNo Prep: The Characters

Camp NaNo Prep: The Characters

“Characters are the lifeblood of any good book.” – Craig Hart

I whole-heartedly agree with this quote (no pun intended), as both a reader and a writer. As a reader, if the characters don’t engage me I’m not likely to enjoy the book. As a writer, if the characters aren’t working then the story doesn’t work. This means that characters are perhaps the most important aspect of a book, and as writers we need to put a lot of attention into them. As I mentioned in my previous prep post, I’m a firm believer in the value of developing almost every character in a book as deeply as possible, and the advice I share below is applicable to any character in your story, be they the protagonist, the antagonist, or a side character. Continue reading “Camp NaNo Prep: The Characters”