The first week of NaNoWriMo is done and my current word count is 12,482.
For the first week, I dedicated myself to writing like the lovely Miriam Rosentvaig. I chose to write like her for the first week because of what her drafting process looks like. The reason: Miriam writes the smut scenes first! When she told me she did that, I immediately knew I wanted to do that first. After she writes the raw uncut version of her main characters then she shapes their background and the story. Miriam also told me she puts focus on her side characters. Side characters are important to her because they help shape the story too. She used the example of reading other stories and the side characters being mentioned once and never seen again. The last thing she shared with me was that she writes characters who are messy. She doesn’t believe in “perfect romances” with minor inconveniences. Life is messy and she writes realistic characters with real problems. Miriam is a plotter for the most part and I am a pantser, so as expected, the plotting aspect was a little foreign to me. However, I followed Miriam’s advice and wrote all the smut scenes first. I had an absolute blast writing those scenes. I learned more about my two main characters than I thought I would. I even added a few songs to the story’s playlist because they were playing on Spotify when I wrote those scenes. Never in my life did I think I’d associate a Slipknot song with a smut scene in a story. Anyway, after the fun scenes were out of the way, I focused on my character’s backstories and their motivations for their decisions in the story. I had sticky notes and random pieces of paper everywhere. I looked like a conspiracy theorist. After I was done with my main characters, I focused on my side characters. If I thought I looked like a conspiracy theorist with my main characters notes, well, I was sadly mistaken. The amount of sticky notes and random pieces of paper I used for my side characters could cover two at-home bulletin boards. Now, that may not sound like a lot of notes to you especially if you’re a plotter, but for a pantser, I’ve never plotted this much in my life. Now, for the last and probably most important part of Miriam’s drafting process. How do I make my characters messy? That part was surprisingly easy. When I developed their backstories and character motivations I noticed they were both messy and had some real shit going on. To keep from spoiling my story, I won’t share that here but just know these two are going to have some struggles that they need to overcome. I had a blast attempting to write like my lovely friend, Miriam Rosentvaig. If you’re interested in reading her books you can find a link to them below. Week two is dedicated to writing like the lovely Jane Apatova, author of the Insatiable Series.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
DreaAlways remember to love yourself. Archives
November 2022
Categories |