Good Morning everyone and Happy Friday. We are about to begin a really fun section of our Nanowrimo planning, the chapter break out. One of the things that I have realized in doing Nano before is that the month goes fast. It really helps to have everything lined up. Normally when I break out chapters to figure out how to set up my story I set up one sentence that takes me from the beginning of the chapter to the end. If you need a formula for this…
Chapter 1: at the start of this chapter (insert Main Character’s Name) is going about business as usual, when we end the chapter …
Then you continue through the chapters in a one sentence list. I find this helps when I am moving fast so that when I know I only have an hour to write I can look at the sentence and see the start and finish which helps eliminate the blank page pause. With Nano I like to also include bullet points under the sentence of things to include in the chapter. These can be things I want to make sure are covered in the set up, personal details of the character – their past or a description. If I know there is something I need to research, or that I have researched, I will also copy links into the bullet points or make note of the name of the file where I might have stored images. Because this is about writing a complete manuscript (50K) in thirty days, this list is a snapshot of each chapter. And honestly sometimes when I find mid month that I need to think about something in one chapter a little longer, I will leapfrog to different chapters where I know exactly what needs to happen then go back to the section I skipped.
Yesterday we gathered all of the various bits we have been compiling for our general outline. I want to remind you here of the usual break out for a three act structure (which is what we used as our outline basis. Act 1 is about 25% of the manuscript. Act 2 is 50% of the manuscript and Act 3 is 25%.
I split my chapter outline into 25 chapters
Act 1: Chapters 1-4
Act 2: Chapters 5-20 (with Chapter 13 as the midpoint)
Act 3: Chapters 21-24
The Denouement is Chapter 25
This is something to keep in mind as you plan your chapter break out. Which we are about to start…
Task #179 (Nano #13): Decide the starting point of your story and write out the one sentence description of the chapter (use more than one sentence if you need to) Add in a bullet point lists of things you want to show in this first chapter below the sentence.
As always, Happy Writing.
