Be Prepared!
By Victoria Fortune
“Tis the season for camp. If you’ve ever been to camp or sent children off, you know why the Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared!” Getting the most out of the experience requires careful planning and preparation. The same is true for writers who attend Camp NaNoWrimo this July.
Last summer, I attended this virtual camp where writers set word or page count goals and commit to reaching them by month’s end. Like all first-time campers, I was nervous heading into it, unsure what I was getting myself into. I got a lot out of the experience: the deadlines kept me motivated, forcing me to block off writing time and stick to a schedule, proving I was capable of generating ten to twelve thousand words a week. Unfortunately, I did a lot of what Nicole Maharaj describe in this week’s NaNoWrimo blog as “writing circles” ending up at times with “a 1000 words that never make it past the editing floor.”
While I didn’t make the forward progress on my book that I’d hoped, it wasn’t a total waste: All writing is good practice, and I did a lot of useful character development and wrote some critical scenes. Much of the “writing in circles” I did was a result of not knowing exactly where I was going. This year, I am much better prepared for camp with the toolkit provided in Lisa Cron’s book Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining to Write a Riveting Novel.
The subtitle might give the impression the book is primarily theoretical, and Part 1 (all 33 pages of it) is an examination of how and why mankind is drawn to narrative and the implications for writers. It is worth reading, but the essence is that stories help us navigate the unknown. In prehistoric times, stories forewarned of physical dangers, increasing the chances of survival. As mankind evolved, stories became about navigating the social world crucial to our survival, allowing us to “interpret, and anticipate, the actions of ourselves and others.” In this section, Cron also dispels the myths of “pantsing” (which, she cautions, usually ends in a “sprawling, aimless frolic”) and the shitty first draft. Yes, she says, the first draft is always shitty, but “[t]here’s a massive difference between the shitty first draft of an actual story, and a shitty first draft that randomly romps all over the damn place.”
From Part II on, Story Genius is a practical guide for digging deeply into your story idea to make sure it has good bones, and then creating a blueprint for your book. Cron starts at the very beginning, asking readers to reflect on that first germ of their idea and what was compelling about it. This helped me hone in on the purpose of my story—the why behind writing it, and the why behind the protagonist’s goal or yearning. The exercises that follow entail pinning down
1) your protagonist’s worldview, “the lens through which your protagonist will see and evaluate everything in your novel, and
2) the essential misbelief—the attitude or mindset that is preventing your protagonist from getting what he or she wants.
This is what creates the inner conflict, what Cron refers to as the “third rail” that drives the plot forward. For your novel to have inner coherence, everything that happens has to touch this third rail.
The next step is to flesh out the moment when your story begins—what sets the protagonist off on the journey—and 2) the “Aha moment” that causes the protagonist to finally recognize her misbelief and experience a change. These are bookends for the rest of the story. For me, figuring out the Aha moment—the destination I was heading toward—was essential. Once you know your destination, you can begin plotting. Cron includes a useful series of exercises to help “test” plot points to determine if they touch the third rail and keep the protagonist moving toward the Aha moment.
One of the most valuable tools in Story Genius is the “Scene Card Template,” a system “to keep track of scenes, of how each event is linked together in an escalating casual succession.” This entails creating a card for each potential scene, identifying
•What happens
• The consequences
• Why it matters
• The realization
• And so? (What the character does as a result, which leads into the next scene)
Thankfully, it’s not necessary to create all your scene cards before you begin writing. (I never would have had the patience for that.) Cron suggests creating the first five or so to build a solid foundation before you start writing, then stopping to create the next batch, and so on. With my blueprint in hand (or the first level of it, at least) I feel prepared for camp.
If you’re considering joining Camp NaNoWrimo to work on a novel, and you don’t have an outline or blueprint, consider grabbing a copy of Story Genius. Devoting some of your word count toward the exercises in it will pay off in the long run. As Cron points out, “This is not pre-writing. The [scenes you write] will most likely appear in your book in the form of flashbacks,” and developing scene cards will keep you on the path to your destination, rather than writing in circles.
Photo credit: ID 97099676 © Ronnie Wu | Dreamstime.com
