Nano: Day 16 – Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.
Ever seen the film Groundhog Day? I feel like that’s where my novel is going at the moment. No, I’m not going to have Ned Ryerson a.k.a ‘Needlenose Ned’ a.k.a ‘Ned the Head’ suddenly pop up…
BING!
I mean my plot seems to be looping.
I seem to have the character reliving the same, or at least similar, day every few chapters. Yes, the MC has a repetitive job and yes his life isn’t that interesting at the moment…but that’s no excuse for monotony!
I’m currently reading back through my plot in an attempt to figure out where the hell it’s going. Aside from the fact I keep getting distracted by things I don’t remember writing, I think its working.
I can feel the plot struggling to make it presence known. It’s in there somewhere and I just have to dig through the words and paragraphs until it rears its head. Then I need to grab it by the scruff of the neck, yank it from the pages and ask it what it wants to be when it grows up.
If it says a dinosaur, I’ll just slap it around until it gives me a sensible answer.
C’mon plot, I know you’re in there somewhere!!
BING!
So if you’re struggling to make progress with your writing, but not for want of trying, then give it a once over to get a better feel for it.
WARNING: Don’t sit there and read it all!
That will take forever and, as much as we all like procrastinating, it will be a major waste of your time. You’re bound to see things you want to tweak and that means your not adding to your word count.
Worse still you could end up deleting words! *shudder*
Just scan the pages for relevant items, plots points you may have missed, things you can elaborate and build on, maybe even something you thought mentioned but actually haven’t. This should kick-start your engine running, and allow you to kick ass with your word count once again.
BING!
That is all.