With only a few days to blast-off, it's time to get your story into shape.
Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Your novel is a STORY.
When you're in the heat of creating your first draft, it's useful to remind yourself of this.
There are many theoretical ways of thinking about story structure. Here's one of the simplest:
* Beginning: the first quarter of the story/ novel. This is the setup. In the setup, we meet the central characters, and discover what their goals are.
* Middle: half the story. This is known as the "dreaded middle", because many novels have a tendency to become bogged down here. Don't let this happen. Make life VERY hard for your characters here. Keep asking yourself "what's the worst that could happen?" - then make it happen.
* End: this is the final quarter of the story. Wind up sub-plots. You're heading for the big bang, the climax of your story, which comes a few pages before the end. Once the climax occurs, your story is just about OVER.
I hope you've been listing your action scenes. Write each scene on an index card - just a sentence will do - and arrange those cards in order of Beginning, Middle and End.
Keep your index cards beside you as you work on the novel.
Technorati Tags: fiction, NaNoWriMo, novel, plotting fiction
