This year was an interesting one as far as the Fifteen Minute Novel went. As you know, the goal is to write for fifteen minutes each day on the same story, using the last line of the previous day as the first sentence of the next. I know not a difficult concept. I have been doing this for several years now and each year I do things slightly differently and each time I learn a lot more about how I write than anything else.
Don’t get me wrong it is great to see the story unfold and expand and to see that word count add up. In case you are curious the end word count for the fifteen minute novel this year reached a total of 142,577. So fifteen minutes a day does add up. And this was writing only five days a week and taking off several holiday days.
One of the things I love about this writing challenge is seeing that word count grow. I also get to take a story idea that might be a little different from what I usually write and that may have languished in a folder with the mental appellation of – at some point I will get around to that – for far too long. I also enjoy the fact that there is a freedom in writing the fifteen minute novel.
It isn’t what I normally write. It doesn’t fit in with a series or have to go along with anything. I tend to apply the same rules to it that I do to my morning prompts. I set the timer for fifteen minutes and write until the timer goes off. Then the next day do the same. It is rare that I wil actually go through and re read a lot of it until the end of the year.
This has both benefits and drawbacks.
The benefits are that I am just letting the story come out without stopping myself for research. I love research. It can however stop me from writing just as much as it can help me. Because I am writing with a timer I will tend to put down what seems to flow with the story line at the moment. Often times I use the highlighter tool in word to indicate a place where I need to research before I go back and edit the whole story. I have a lot of highlights throughout the story. Before I edit I will need to research what the ventilation system in a car looks like and find out how easy it is to rig something to it. Then if that is even possible I will have to go and look into the types of gas as well as the mechanisms that could be used (or at least get a basic idea of how such a thing might operate.)
Sometimes when I know there are things I might need for reference before the story starts, things that I know are going to come up, I will do a little bit of research. I will make a few notes about technicalities I suspect will arise and I will often clip pictures for visual reference. Sometimes it is a pretty stout folder, other times I decide not to do any research at all. Some years I work with an outline and other times I completely wing it.
That does take us into the perils department. Because it is fresh and timed writing it is very easy for your plans to go awry. I have started with outlines before, and sometimes I follow them. Sometimes I see that I am approaching the end of my outline before I am running out of year and feel the need to stretch things out.
This year I started with Sophie Daniels. My plan was to start with someone who is cautious and quiet, maybe taken advantage of at work. My plan was for her to have a side hustle that gained traction enough that she could build her confidence and quit her job going out on her own. It was more of a simple story concept than an outline. In fact here was the entire outline I started with.
- Sophie working data entry in an office where others take advantage – longer lunches, leave early, pass work off to her.
- has sewing hobby and starts to sell a few items to a consignment shop
- gains confidence in her skills and starts to create more items, some from her own designs.
- meanwhile at work things get worse, more nights late, more abuse of system from others and taking her for granted.
- sits down with finances and realizes that she is making enough money to pay her bills and put a bit in savings each month.
- have some sort of stress factor that makes the job no longer worth it.
- confidence gaining win for Sophie giving her the courage to leave
- leaves to strike out on her own.
As you can see it was a fairly basic road map more than anything else. The problem is that is not how things developed. Anytime I got her close to leaving, something happened. The leave time she took in the beginning was supposed to serve as a way to give her time off to realize just how stressed the office made her and to see how much they were taking advantage of her. It was supposed to be where she started thinking that maybe she needed to do something about it. Yet in the process, the upper management realized she was useful and started making changes.
the end result is that I couldn’t get her to leave the job. Not in a way that fit the character or the story. So I floundered for a bit. And then Kristen went mental. And my story changed.
I’m glad it did but it does mean there is going to be a lot of editing. I still want Sophie to grow in confidence and start to do her own design work. But I think I am also going to start incorporating Kristen’s break down and descent into madness. A lot will be trimmed, and new chapters from a different character perspective added. It is a much different story than I planned, but I like it better.
Now that my plan has floundered I am going to be able to see the story that Sophie really wants to be a part of. Which makes me happy.
And it leads me to 2025.
I have had a story that when I did posts about novel planning I used as an example. Some of you may remember from way back when. If not, feel free to scroll back a few years in the posts. The story example was Bob vs. the Alien Slug Monsters.
And 2025 is going to be Bob’s time to shine. This year I have a basic outline. I also have a cast of characters. And I have a plan. There is the possibility that Bob might defeat the Alien Slug Monsters before the end of December 2025. And so Bob may just have to fight off other threats to his community. For now, there are Alien Slug Monsters. By June there may be Monstrous Mermaids or even Frightening Frogs, possibly even Bickering Banshees. It will depend on how the Slug Monsters go. Regardless I think it is time to write the story of Bob, and tomorrow we shall begin.
Ten til Midnight 