workblog

Turning an outline from a list of plot points into a scaffolding that you can use to build a story

by Hugh Sullivan

chickenscratching.com

chickenscratchingdotcom.tumblr.com

Note: this is an article I wrote last year for NaNoWriMo, with the intent of publishing it then. For some reason it never got published, so I figured I’d start out some very pre-NaNo posts with this now.

I could write an entire article on the various ways of coming up with an outline… but it’s been done. A lot. Which is what I found when I started preparing for my first attempt at completing a full novel for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short).

There are dozens of methods for coming up with an outline, maybe as many as there are writers. Some methods get reused a lot. Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method is great for expounding something into a pulp-style 4 act format, and I used my own personal take on the concept to do the outline for my first NaNoWriMo story. Snyder’s ‘save the cat’ or Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ beat sheet is good for adventure stories. A sprawling list of clues, red herrings, and possible deductions to be made in different situations can be used for a mystery story. A list of obstacles and how to overcome them can be a barebones outline for everything from a children’s story to a romance novel to a sprawling science fiction epic.

The first year that I did NaNoWriMo, I thought an outline would be enough. But a week before November started, I looked at my outline and realized that I still didn’t know how to make it go from an outline into a story.

So here’s what I did, and I hope this will help you too.

Step 1) Map out your foundation

The very first novel I ever wrote for NaNoWriMo (or at all, for that matter) was written in a very episodic format, made to be published serially in short audio format, and then as a whole novel afterward. The main story had four acts, each act had four chapters, each chapter could be divided up into four 10-ish minute long podcasts. (Should I choose to make four books in this series, then I suppose the structure will be completely fractal at that point) This made it easy for me to separate out each episode to do this step. However, not every outline is going to be as clearly delineated. You may have to go through every point in your outline, or you may be able to find small logical groupings of events.

Then you start listing out what each section actually does for the story.

In general, the early parts will involve setting up the characters, world, and plot. Later chapters will illustrate more about the characters, move the plot along, and show how the characters change and grow.

For example, here is a basic example of a chapter outline from my first NaNoWriMo novel. My original outline had a basic overview of each chapter, and four separate points divided up into what would happen in each ~10 minute podcast.

 

Chapter 1) Jacobs washes up in Crown Bay, setting the story in motion

  • Jacobs washes up on shore in Crown Bay. Jim Leatherby uses a magical item and finds him.
  • Jacobs gets drunk, screams at a statue commemorating the massacre ten years prior, then gets cornered by guards and subsequently rescued by Jim Leatherby.
  • Jim brings Jacobs somewhere quiet to get sober, and then recognizes him.
  • Cut to the governor’s office in the city. The governor confides in his right-hand man, Commodore Briggs, that he’s near breaking down. He lost his wife during the massacre ten years ago, he can’t afford to lose his daughter. Briggs brings him the good news that Captain Jacobs has been spotted, and he takes a group of soldiers to find him.

 

Once the outline of this chapter was done, I went through and wrote down all of the functions that this chapter served in the novel.

 

Functions of Chapter 1

  • Hook the reader into the lead character and world.
  • Introduce the reader to the two protagonists.
  • Introduce the idea of magical items in this world.
  • Show that Jim has a very simple life, and that the magic item he possesses can lead him to find adventure outside of that life.
  • Show that Jacobs is in fact the captain of a pirate ship, not just a sailor who fell overboard.
  • Show that Jacobs is well known enough that the governor would be looking for him, and leave the reader with enough questions as to why to keep them reading further.
  • Show that this town has a history, and link that history to why Jim is an orphan and Jacobs left to became a pirate.

 

Most of these functions will seem simple and obvious to the writer of the outline. Even so, it’s good to actually list them out so that you know what your foundation is supporting. Now that we’ve mapped out what the outline currently supports, we move on to the next step.

 

Step 2) Figure out where to place your support beams

Every story has basic needs that need to be fulfilled. A story needs a beginning, a middle, an end, and action or conflict to move itself along while keeping the reader engaged.

The basic outline of my novel was a very simple four act structure, similar to the potboiler pulp stories of Lester Dent and Michael Moorcock. In the first act, the world, characters, and the adventure were introduced. In the second, the characters found themselves embroiled in that adventure. The peak of the growing adventure hits between the second and third act, where the characters have to choose whether to blunder on or give up. And by the end of the third act, they have found themselves in so deep that there is no longer a choice. They have to see their way to the end. (Those who have looked into popular story and act structures may recognize this as somewhat similar to the current Hollywood 3-act structure, and both styles are compatible with most popular beat sheet formats as well.)

That meant that for my story, the basic needs for each act were simple. I needed to hook the audience at the beginning with an interesting world and characters. I needed to keep building the story in such a way that it kept people tuning in for the next chapter or episode.

But every plot point creates a set of needs as well. Let’s say that in your story, part of your plot entails a group of people traveling into a dangerous area.

So now you add to your list of story needs:

  • Show the reader that the area is dangerous
  • Show whether the characters know it’s dangerous.

 

There are also some more subtle needs that you may not think of right away, but once you get into the habit of looking for them, you’ll find them fairly easily. Some of them may not have to be in any one particular place in the story, they may simply need to be inserted somewhere before the point where they are used in the story. Think of this is kind of a reverse Chekov’s gun. If a gun is needed at the end of the story, then make a note to show that the gun exists in the universe.

For example, when I realized that a minor character was going to be killed off at the end of the story, I decided that his past life before the story needed to at least be hinted at, if not expounded on so that when he died he could pass on some sage advice and maybe make some of the sappier readers get a little bit misty-eyed. (Not that I would know ANYTHING about that. Men don’t cry. Not even when a house-elf breaks his promise and sacrifices himself to save someone else’s life. Nope.) So that was added to the general list, as a note of something that needed to be worked in where it could be.

Some obvious things to put on the list of overarching story needs are things like:

  • Get the audience to know the characters well enough to understand their motivations and capabilities. (There’s nothing better than a villain whose motivations you understand… but can’t condone.)
  • Display the basic traits of the important characters and settings. (Even if your protagonist is going to be a boring everyman character for the audience to project themselves onto, the rest of the cast has to be three dimensional and interesting.)
  • Find some way to fill in any important backstory that’s relevant to the current plot. (Sometimes this may end in a simple flashback or prologue. But if you just keep it in mind while writing, you can often find a spot to weave it into the narrative much more naturally.)
  • Give the reader a question. (Who killed the butler?)
  • Answer the reader’s question. (It was the maid in the drawing room with the candlestick.)

Now that you have your foundation and you’ve set up support beams on it, it’s time to make sure that the beams can actually support your story.

Step 3) Build your crossbraces

Now that you have a list of what each chapter accomplishes, and what each chapter and the story overall needs, you can start going through and finding the holes in your outline and plugging them. Sometimes this is as simple a step as leaving yourself a note to mention something important in a character’s backstory. Other times it may require adding in a few extra plot points that you hadn’t thought of in the original outline. Something that you may have been able to do on the fly when writing, but now you don’t have to.

Keep in mind that even if you miss something in the planning phase, this method can help while writing as well. If you reach a block, don’t try to figure out how to get around it. Try to figure out what the story needs to continue. Does it need an outside force to make something happen? Or do the characters need to find their own way? This can be a wonderful spot to allow a person to step forward, do something to show growth and character, and help move the story along.

At one point in my novel outline, I needed a way for a character to escape after being tied up. So I made a point to mention in earlier chapters that he hid several coins in hidden pockets in a leather bracelet, and he was quite adept at sleight of hand, repeatedly making the coins appear and disappear. So when the time came, it wasn’t a shock to the reader when he produced a coin and used it to saw away at the rope. A simple bit of characterization early on saved me from a plot hole at the end of the novel, and simultaneously helped illustrate the character better for the audience.

Step 4) Start building

Now that your outline has filled in, you’ve got more than just a list of plot points. You’ve got a guide that you can use to write your story. A solid, but not inflexible scaffolding to build on.

For an example on how to use the guide in practice, let’s break down the plot point that I mentioned above. In this case, we’ll say that the characters are going to go into this dangerous area, and they will be made aware of the danger.

In the original outline, it would have simply said, “The protagonist, his sidekick, and the guide go into the Blasphort Desert.” Now, you have a bit more set up to write the scene when it happens.

 

“Hmm,” the guide said, poking the ground with the toe of his boot. “Not good.”

“What is it?” the protagonist asked.

“Wyrling tracks. Their territory is close. Probably near the canyon, for access to water.”

The protagonist shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We have to get through. And if we stray too far from the river…”

“Only one way to deal with wyrlings,” the guide said.

The sidekick piped up, “At least there’s something. How do you deal with a wyrling?”

“Run faster,” the guide replied.

The protagonist looked at the guide curiously. “I didn’t think you could outrun a wyrling.”

The guide shook his head. “Can’t. But outrun someone else, and…”

“Oh,” the sidekick said.

The protagonist put his hand on the sidekick’s shoulder. “Doesn’t matter.”

 

Now when the scene is written, both the audience and the characters know they’re walking into danger, and some other needs outside of the scene have been fulfilled. For one, the audience now knows a bit more about the personality of the three characters and the danger that they’ll be facing. The guide is simple and straightforward, the hero determined but sensible, the sidekick a little more worried about the situation than the hero, and wyrlings are some sort of dangerous creature, but will stop to feed.

From my own experience, I’ve found that there isn’t a clever pun or turn of phrase that I’ve come up with that makes me feel half as clever a writer as when I write a short passage that manages to fulfill a half dozen story needs. And when facing the normal amounts of self-doubt that one faces while writing a novel, those moments where we as writers feel clever should be cherished.

 

 

About the author

Hugh Sullivan has been a long time dabbler in writing, music, and tabletop and video game design. After a ten year hiatus from creative work, the voice in his head finally convinced him that not having a creative outlet was going to eventually drive him crazy, so he went back to school to do a minor in video game design, worked on designing a tabletop role playing game, started participating in NaNoWriMo, and composing soundtracks to accompany podcasts of his writing.

Ironically, doing all four at once may be a clearer sign of madness than following the advice of a voice in one’s head. Follow his work at his website, chickenscratching.com, or his slightly more active tumblr account, chickenscratchingdotcom.tumblr.com.

Ch ch ch ch ch changes

It’s been a while since I updated anything, mostly due to major life changes. I’m still working on rewrites and edits for my two novel-length projects, although my major work in the last year or so had to do with relearning some old 3d modeling skills and working on other things relating to a major life event: I got married this summer. Where do the 3d modeling skills come into play? Well, we had to make suitably themed cake toppers.
Cake Toppers
Ain’t 3d printing grand?

In all seriousness, my (now) wife and I have been working on another creative project besides the audio serial of Incorporated. We’ve also been working on creating a publishable tabletop role playing game module. In the interim, I’ve also been elected VP of my local group of sci-fi/fantasy writers, which has kept me a bit busy on that front. While preparing for a presentation, I realized that maybe I should use the various presentations I’ve given as something to write about here on the blog. So look forward to a few posts about designing, writing, et cetera.

Am I going to finish remastering Saving Christmas (before next Christmas)?

At the moment, I’m very tempted to put it aside and keep working on it behind the scenes until Christmas comes around again. With eleven episodes written (only eight recorded and four with a decent soundtrack and remastering) for the first year, and thirteen written for the next year’s story, I think it might be worth trying to get it all together so that I can do one podcast a day for the first twenty four days of December this coming year.

Click to read the rest

In a nutshell, I’ve gotten plenty written to be podcasted… and little podcasted from what I’ve written. I think I need to focus more on the sound end of things so that I can actually produce. My writing and editing speed and reliability is not in question. My recording, soundtrack writing, and sound editing speed and reliability is.

As for what stories I feel are in a good enough place to start podcasting them, Murder Most Fowl is on the back burner until I can figure out how to set a steadier tone to the story. It’s all good and well to have a light-hearted take on a dark story, but so far the juxtaposition isn’t working well, and I need to figure out how to make it work. My pirate novel that I finished for NaNoWriMo the November before last is still being rewritten, and I don’t think it’s quite ready for prime time. And with summer peeking in the windows, it’s simply the wrong season for Saving Christmas.

Which, oddly enough, leaves Incorporated, the serial that is only about a quarter finished, as the one that I could best start publishing serially right now. Out of all of the stories that I’ve been working on so far, it’s the most episodic in style, and since it uses a female first-person voice, I won’t be using my own stuttering, mumbling, occasionally downright screwing up lines voice in the recording. Which will save a lot of time recording and editing.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been working on a musical style for the soundtrack to Incorporated. I posted a hint of the soundtrack style in my last post. I’ve decided to use bits and pieces of musical sketches to help reach out to other cyberpunk fans and writers via Tumblr. I’m posting musical sketches along with a writing prompt in a style of story that matches the music. Up until this point, I hadn’t done much with my Tumblr account, even though I know it can be used to reach out to others with similar interests as well as if not better than Twitter.

My tumblr account is at chickenscratchingdotcom.tumblr.com, and I really should add that to the links on my webpage now that I’m actually using it for something.

For now, it looks like the primary voice you’ll be hearing on Chickenscratched Serials in the near future will not be my own.

 

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Experimental music track for upcoming serial

Apologies for the very long delays. Work on remastering Saving Christmas kind of went kaput when I got sick several times, and life kind of got away from me. I’m trying to get my manure back in order and hopefully finish remastering the series, but in the meantime, here’s a concept music track for another serial I’ve been working on as of late, tentatively called Incorporated.

 

 

I’ve been challenging myself to write the soundtrack to this series as simply as possible. It’s a cyberpunk distopian setting, and I wanted to make something that had both the simplicity of much of the 80s and 90s synth style music that inspired cyperpunk cinema, but done entirely digitally on the same computer I’m using to write the story. This theme was created entirely in the very simple desktop version of the synth app NanoStudio.

Attacked, delayed, derided – A coffee shop style audioblog update

This is my first attempt at an audioblog update, done hastily over the course of less than an hour. It’s also my first attempt at doing any kind of podcast, just to test the waters and see if this plugin works for my needs for the website/business idea I am working on. The full text of this is below the cut, but feel free to just hit play and listen.

Attacked, delayed, derided – A coffee shop style audioblog update

Today was an… interesting day. Today was the one day when I really, really, needed to get to work on time. So, of course, I was running just late enough that it looked like I’d barely make it. But about a third of the way there, there was a moment. That moment when the adrenaline kicks in, and everything starts going in slow motion, because there’s something drifting towards your car, and even though you can’t see the car in the lane next to you, traffic is dense and you know you can’t safely swerve out of the way.

But the thing drifting towards me was not a deer, or a car, or anything massive enough to actually be dangerous. It was not on the ground. It was in the air. Drifting. A long, slithering, stringy, grayish, translucent mass either came out a window or was kicked up in the air by a car head of me.

And it intersected with my car, wrapping my car lovingly in its tendrily embrace. It wrapped a part of itself firmly around the passenger side mirror, and clung to it for dear life. What it was, I couldn’t be sure. Frayed nylon rope? No, it looked a little too… organic for that.

There was no safe place to pull over. My drive to work involves a quick jaunt on three highways that intersect closely. I couldn’t pull over because my first exit was coming up. And there was nowhere safe to pull over until I got to work. So I drove, distracted by the whipping of the grey, stringy mass firmly entrenched in the seam between my mirror and the rest of the car.

The more it whipped in the wind, the more I was certain, it wasn’t a frayed rope.

I drove along, looking to all the world like a psychotic serial killer slash scalper, with five feet of hair attached to my car, whipping in the wind.

When I finally arrived in the parking lot at work, thankfully there was no one within sight of the right side of my car. It had knotted itself around the mirror, and it took several minutes to extricate it from the crevice. The texture was crinkly and crisp, and my original guess of nylon seemed to be accurate. It looked to be several chunks of a wig or a weave, stuck together in a nearly six foot long chain of seemingly human hair. I couldn’t leave it there… I didn’t want have the police march into my work and demand to know who was murdered near my car. So I was late to work, and thankfully only looked once again like a serial killer slash scalper for the forty seconds it took to walk from my car to the nearest trash can.

I was scheduled to teach the kid’s class at my work today. I work at an arts and crafts store, that will be familiar to most denizens of North America. I won’t say which one, but suffice to say that we have a Joann, A Michel (yes, that’s how her parents spelled it), and we used to have someone with the last name Moore working for us. We’ve never had someone named Hobby or Lobby working with us, but that’s okay, I’d like to think that we wouldn’t hire someone who discriminates against half of the population.

While I find it urgent to show up on time for days when I’m scheduled for the class, it’s only because they never tell me ahead of time what the lesson is going to be. The kids usually don’t show up until half an hour later. I just want the chance to actually look at the lesson plan so I know what I’m going to be teaching them. Of course, today of all days is the first time someone has shown up exactly at ten o’clock for the class. Someone who refused to wait for me to get there, because she intended to simply sign the her two children and two more neighbor’s children up for the class and then dump them for the rest of the morning. The recommended time for each class project is half an hour, and if the children want to stay later they can just play with the various art supplies in the classroom. Apparently we’re the cheapest babysitters in town.

Since the projects were already underway by the time I got there at six after ten, leading me to believe the woman actually showed well before ten and strong armed the manager into opening the classroom early, we decided it was best to let the employee who’d started the project stay until they were done. Of course, this was before we realized that the mother was using us as a cheap babysitting service, and the extra time stretched from half an hour into two hours. At a certain point we did switch and I took over, simply because the other employee was edging into overtime.

Thankfully the children were quite well behaved for such an energetic bunch of siblings slash neighbors, so a good time was had by all. Except, of course, the beancounters back in the corporate office, who had expected the eight dollars paid to more than cover the half hour of employee work that had been intended to be put towards the project.

I relayed my terrifying story of hair horror to most of my coworkers, of course. Since I didn’t cause an accident on the highway or get flagged down as a potential murder suspect, it was funny.

I’m not sure if it would have been funny had those two criteria not been met.

The rest of the day was somewhat uncomfortable. Corporate recently decided to do a manager swap, and the new manager and I got off on the wrong foot originally. We’ve since talked things over, and for the most part there aren’t any problems… but today he seemed to fall into a strange passive-aggressive streak. I’m not sure if it was just aimed at me, but it certainly felt that way. It’s funny, a few years back when corporate decided to try to force us to sign affidavits stating that we would not talk about the company on any public blogs or anything, I had intended to start a small rebellion and make a blog specifically to talk about work. I thought I could be clever, and hide the details so that no one could prove that it was me and I was actually talking about my job.

Yes, even in your late twenties and early thirties, an urge for immature teenage rebellion still surfaces now and then. In the end, I realized that after two or three years of working in the same place, I would only have a half dozen blog posts at most. My job just isn’t that interesting.

Which leads to this. I’m recording this, not because I’m a narcissist who likes to hear the sound of his own voice, but rather because I’m trying to force myself to be more comfortable reading prose into a microphone. I’ve gotten back into writing over the last year or so, and now I’m hoping to diversify into a small publishing company. One that specializes in publishing pulp style audiobooks and audiodramas. Since any small company requires the employees to be versatile enough to handle more than one job, I know I’ll certainly be tasked to take advantage of my music skills to write soundtracks, my writing skills to write scripts and prose, and of course, I’ll more than occasionally have to do just what I’m doing now: blathering into a microphone and making it not sound like crap. In spite of the occasional cold or, as is the case right now, stuffy dose. And the occasional sounds of power tools from the neighbor behind my apartment who has decided that now is a perfect time to use power tools to trim metal pipes in the middle of his driveway.

So from now on, I’m going to try to record all blog posts as audio. As practice for the company I’m trying to make, and hopefully not as an exercise in narcissism.

No promises, though.

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Serial vs. unstructured writing

Lately I’ve been getting more and more into the idea of serials, and perhaps even seriously podcasting audiobook/audiodrama versions of serial fiction. I’m actually contemplating finding other writers and voice-over people and actually getting into serious online publishing. The internet seems like a fertile place for serial fiction, especially following the model of a lot of the old pulp style productions. After all, there’s almost no cost at all to just hosting a website and posting podcasts, then publishing the final audiobooks and ebooks online.

Most recently I’ve been spending a lot of time editing and doing some rewriting for my NaNoWriMo novel, and I’m tweaking the structure of it to fit better with audiobook or serial publishing. At first it had the kind of fractal structure where the basic rise and fall of the action was mirrored all the way down from having four major plot points or scenes in a chapter, four chapters per act, four acts per book, and all the way up to having four books in this series eventually. Of course, since I wasn’t intending to serialize it at first, each chapter segment was a somewhat arbitrary and random length, ranging from 800 to nearly 2000 words. The longest chapter was about 6k words, the shortest about 4k. I’ve recut some scenes, rewritten some others, and eventually gotten a much steadier pace. 1200-1800 words per section. Judging from my experience with doing the Saving Christmas audiobook, these will make for a good 6-10 minutes of audio each.

I honestly don’t know if this will end up being an improvement or detriment to the story. It definitely changes the flow to a much steadier pace. And it’s forced me to flesh out some sections that were a bit more skeletal than they should have been, while trimming back or moving some other scenes that made another section too full. But I’m happy with what I’ve done so far, so hopefully that counts for something.

Unfortunately, if I only do a weekly post/podcast with the chapters in quarters, that means it will take 64 weeks to get the entire thing out. That’s more than a year of podcasting, just for one novel. Doing two or three chapters a week would leave each week with hanging chapter bits, unresolved plots, and generally wouldn’t fit the shape of the story well. So if I am going to podcast it, the only real option would be to do an entire chapter a week.

I’ve been tooling around with the idea of actually doing up to seven daily podcasts, one for each day of the week focusing on a different genre of pulp-style storytelling. However, since I go to school full time and work part time, I simply wouldn’t have the time to do them all myself. Which means that I would definitely want to find other writers and voice-over people to work with. Writers who enjoy working within the structure of serial fiction, making self-enclosed bits short enough to fit well into a short audiobook/audiodrama snippet, but make up a part of a larger whole. Voice-over people who enjoy either doing storytelling style narration or doing character voices for audiodrama.

At the moment, all I’d really have to do to get started is to find a few people to work with who share an interest in these things. People who don’t mind taking a risk on doing some work that may or may not actually earn any money. Pick a few possible days/genres to start. And go with it.

And there’s the rub right there. I’d love to actually get into a solid, serious bit of publishing online. Something that will connect readers/listeners with writers, and let them share what they make and enjoy. Serial fiction is growing on the internet. But so far, few people have been able to actually make any money with it. I want to help writers get paid. I think trying an approach like this, podcasting, then selling the final books/seasons/whatever you want to call them to the people who enjoyed them as they were broadcast. Not too dissimilar to how TV stations make extra money by selling season boxed sets of DVDs after the season finishes.

I know I’m going to get into publishing in some way, shape, or form eventually. Since I also do role playing game design, I will have to find some way to get my role playing sourcebooks published. So I am going to have some kind of publishing company, even if it’s just a company name with only me behind it, to publish. Why not get a jump on things by starting now with the fiction that I have ready to go, instead of waiting until I have finished and fully tested role playing games?

I don’t have particularly good spam filters for my site at the moment, so I haven’t been allowing any comments. So if you are a writer interested in bringing back a modern version of pulp serial fiction and/or voice over artist interested in narrating, acting, or hosting a show and you are interested, find me on twitter or facebook.

I haven’t gone into great detail about some of the ideas I have for my podcast and publishing here, just a general overview. I don’t want to put my entire business idea out there for someone better equipped than I to steal and beat me to the punch. But I have started putting out some feelers to other writers to see if people are interested, so I figured it would be best to at least lay a few cards on the table here on my personal website.

I’ve been neglecting my blog…

but not my writing. After NaNoWriMo, I managed to keep the momentum going for a bit. I was still writing Saving Christmas: Slay Bells, which has now finished. Right up until I got a nasty cold that killed my voice I was recording audiobook chapters, and I’m just now getting back into that. I’m really enjoying doing audiobook serial installments, to the point where I’ve been considering doing a regular podcast of whatever it is that I’m writing.

I’ve been continuing to work on Murder Most Fowl as well, although that’s going a bit slower than I had originally intended. I think I’m going to start releasing it along with an audiobook version at the same time. That way I can use the audiobook recording as a way of editing it before releasing it, much like I had been doing with Saving Christmas up until I got that cold.

And, since it’s been almost two months now, I think it’s time for me to get back into my NaNoWriMo novel and work on finishing the last two chapters, and doing rewrites for all of the previous ones.

This could end up being a lot of work that I make for myself.

It could also end up being well worth the effort.

NaNoWriMo is DoneForNow

I didn’t finish the novel itself, and I’m taking a little breather before I dive back in and do the ending. I got 7/8ths of the way through my outline, which put me at about 71,000 words if I recall correctly. So I ‘won’ NaNo, but I still haven’t finished my first novel.

Still, I am taking a breather on that to keep up with my serials. My fan fiction updated four times this week, and I decided to do a big shocker on my return to that. My favorite review so far on that work is just one word: “WHOA!”

And I’ve managed to keep Saving Christmas: Slay Bells updated once a week, save for Thanksgiving week which I felt was an inappropriate time to update it. I didn’t have the free time to record the audiobook for the last two chapters, so I’m hoping to catch up with that. And I’m hoping to make audiobook recording a more normal thing, because I’m thinking about podcasting all of my serial work. It probably won’t happen for at least a few weeks, possibly not until the new year. But I’ve got a decent microphone now, and I’m getting a feel for it.

So, I’m backing off from the grind of NaNo to get my nose back in line for the grind of… well, everything else I’ve been working on lately. :)

Halfway through my first novel

This last chapter was actually fairly emotionally draining. Understandable, since it’s a four act structure, and this was the high point of the middle of the book. For a cheesy adventure about pirates, this book is dealing with some serious shit. The chapter started with battle, and ended with a marriage and a funeral.

A birthday update…

On my birthday, I managed to finish editing and uploading the fourth audiobook chapter of Saving Christmas: Slay Bells, and finish Chapter 3 of my NaNoWriMo project, which put me at just over 15,000 words.

The next day I had expected to have a full day at home to work. But I got a call from my boss, asking me to come in and cover a shift. I needed the money, so I said yes. I didn’t get home until about 4:30 in the afternoon.

By I had finished chapter 4, which put me at just over 20,000 words. The first act of my NaNoWriMo project is done. After only getting back into writing for about two months, I’ve managed to write over 95,000 words split among various project. Although, I do have to admit, I may have cheated a bit and reused a few words here and there.

I hope I can keep up this pace, because my outline puts my NaNoWriMo project at a little over 80,000 words. And I would very much like to finish it before the post-Thanksgiving rush at my day job.