Filling in the Holes after NaNoWriMo

By Shon Bacon

How many of you guys know about NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month [http://nanowrimo.org], and it’s held every November. During the month, you are to write 50,000 words toward a new project.

If you did participate, then right about now, you’re probably sitting on several thousand words toward a story. CONGRATULATIONS! Even if you didn’t hit the 50k, congrats! Why? Because whatever you wrote in November are words you didn’t have before November!

For the last five years, including this year, I have participated an “won” NaNo, but this was the first year in which I didn’t come to November 1st with a well-detailed outline in hand and characters just eager to jump onto a page and cause trials and tribulations.

Now, I ride into December with words and not a clear sense of where to go now that I don’t have the constraints of 30 days to write, write, write.

Where do I go from here? Where should YOU go from here if you’re in the same boat?

BACK to the story. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to step away from the words you have written and think about the word “story.” There are components that are necessary to have a solid story – character, conflict, tension, obstacles, resolution, etc., and if we ask ourselves a couple of questions about “our” story, then we can look at a brief sketch of the entire story, from beginning to end. This will help us to come back the words we have and start revising and adding to them in order to finish a good draft.

So, what are the questions?  There are eight.

1) Who is your main character (MC)?

2) What does the MC want?

3) What’s the main conflict that keeps the MC from getting that want?

4) What’s the event/situation that sets the MC in motion to achieve the want?

5) What are the obstacles the MC encounters, keeping him/her from the want? (Obstacles should escalate, building tension)

6) What’s the event/situation that makes the MC go “All-or-Nothing” to win the want? (This is a moment in which there is no turning back)

7) Does the MC win or lose?

What’s the effect of the win or loss on the MC?

When I’m editing my clients’ works and I find holes or gaps in their stories, I have them develop an answer for each of these questions, and then we discuss what’s missing from the story and how to apply some of these answers to the revising of the story. The questions are asked in a traditional way, meaning they have a beginning, middle, ending flow to them. However, not all stories are traditional. Some start at the end and then show the reader how that ending came to be.

The point is most, if not all, stories touch upon each of these questions, so it benefits you as the writer to analyze your story, paying attention to these questions and editing your story accordingly.

At the end of the day, you’ll be able to develop what you have already written and then continue on more confidently as you pursue your story’s conclusion

Every author, at one point, gets asked the following question, “Who/what inspired you to write?”

It’s one of those questions in which we get to see inside the author – beyond their words onto the page to what makes them yearn to fill those once blank pages.

It’s one of those questions in which we also get to inside ourselves. As writers, it’s important to see where our sparks come from, to see what makes us believe that we have a story to tell…and just an important, a story to share and have read by others.

There are many things that inspire me to write; my top three are as follows:

LIFE INSPIRES ME TO WRITE.
Everyday that I have the opportunity to wake up and face another day brings me potential fodder for my writing endeavors. Being a new driver in a new city in a new state. Being away from my family for the first time in nearly six years. Being in a Ph.D. program that requires the brain to run with precision 24-7. The conversations I peep while on Twitter. The Jehovah Witness who, yet again, knocks on a door on Sunday morning only to have another homeowner shut the door in his face. The way one of my students used to slough into the classroom looking like she had the world’s issues on her shoulders. The cute barista at the coffee shop who pines every time the object of her affection walks in, ignores her, and orders a caramel macchiato. These life moments and more are golden nuggets that I jot down on Post-its and write on the back of old receipts to ponder later, in the hopes of coming up with the next story idea. Things that seem so mundane in life, in the hands of a writer, can become engaging stories to a reader.

WHAT I FEAR INSPIRES ME TO WRITE.
Everyone has at least one fear. Everyone has experienced hurt. Everyone has that one pain that he or she tries valiantly to push back into the psyche, never to think of again. True-to-the-bone writers tap into those fears, those hurts, those pains. They look at the things that can make other people wince and write with unflinching clarity of those things. And the best writers tell these stories in a way that doesn’t reflect sentimentality. Elizabeth McCracken in her memoir, AN EXACT REPLICA OF A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION [http://www.amazon.com/Exact-Replica-Figment-My-Imagination/dp/0316027677/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221448474&sr=8-1] does exactly this. The subject of the book: a mother losing her first child in the ninth month of pregnancy. It’s a heartbreaking book – any book about the loss of a child would be, but at the very beginning of the book, McCracken lets us know that a baby has died. She moves us beyond that stark realization, that pain, and invites us to her life before and after the loss. She takes a hard subject, removes the clichéd, stereotypical sentimentality that would surround the subject, and gives the reader a raw, true-to-life view of the subject. It takes guts to do it. I’m still learning to collect enough guts to pull it off.

WHAT I DON’T KNOW INSPIRES ME TO WRITE.
I use to always tell my students, “I may not know everything, but if need be, I can learn it.” I have an innate, an insatiable need to KNOW. To know what? EVERYTHING. When I read about the young Chicago honor student who was beaten to death, I immediately wonder where a person has to be mentally, emotionally to reach out to cyberspace instead of family and real friends. I don’t know the answer to that, but I want to. When I see a drastic, negative change in a friend’s personality and she continues to tell me “Nothing’s wrong,” I immediately flesh out all the scenarios of what could be troubling her. The minute something makes me think Why or How, my mind is already at work, formulating answers that if stuck in the brain long enough can grow into a story idea.

In short, just about everything inspires me to write. In fact, I oftentimes turn into Writer Shōn while in the middle of a situation, inwardly telling myself, “I don’t know when, but this is going into a story someday.”

What inspires YOU to write?

Bio

Shōn Bacon is an author, editor, and educator – all of which connects with her being a true wordsmith.

As an author, she has published both in the creative and academic arenas – short stories, essays, co-authored novels, and composition textbooks. In the last three years, every screenplay she’s written has placed in some level of a competition. As an editor, she helps writers to develop their stories for publication with the mindset of not only helping the story but helping writers become better at their craft. As an educator, she has taught freshman composition, mass communication courses, and fiction writing at the university level.

Currently, Shōn is busy writing screenplays and pursuing her Ph.D. in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Her debut solo novel, DEATH AT THE DOUBLE INKWELL, will be released June 2010 from Lady Leo Publishing.

You can learn more about Shōn through her official website [http://shonbacon.com] and through CLG Entertainment [http://clg-entertainment.com], dedicated to her editorial services