#NaNoWriMo and a #Free #Writing Tool
(Beth Turnage Blog) So you are deep in NaNo and emotions run high. Perhaps you’ve finished a chapter or two, but then the dreaded crash. You know where you are heading but now you’ve become stuck in the mire.
Because I write a lot of novels each year for my clients, I don’t have the time to wallow through the muck. One thing I found helps me move along is this tool.
The questions this form helps you answer are:
What happens in the chapter?
Who is your POV character?
What is your character’s:
a.)motivation
b.)conflicts
c.)feelings on the matter
But the real gold in this sheet is this:
This is the lower half of the sheet. I find it helpful to separate the chapter into three parts and use escalating emotions, and increasing jeopardy to jack the tension of the chapter. I choose three emotions, escalating in intensity for the chapter. For this, the book The Emotion Thesaurus is very helpful. But if you want to use the online version, I suggest ponying up for a monthly subscription of One Stop for Writers which was created by the authors of The Emotion Thesaurus as well as their other fine thesauri. Pro hint: It’s so much easier copying and pasting the information you want to use than typing it from the book. 🙂
I’ll use most of the first third examining the character’s reactions and emotions about the action in the previous chapter. At the first one-third mark, I’ll change up the chapter with a twist and set up the action to come. The last one-third is about the action, and the result of the action, with a set-up for the chapter to come.
So, if you ever cross a chapter you have trouble gestating, this sheet will help you to hash it out.