Happy NaNoWriMo!

For those of you who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it is National Novel Writing Month, also known as what writers do to torture themselves throughout the month of November. The goal? Write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. That’s only 1,667 words a day, not too bad, right? If you want to join in, head over to nanowrimo.org to sign up. It’s free, and if you finish, you’ll get a certificate, and who knows what else. However, you won’t get your life back, but who needs it?

For those of you just getting started, but not sure what to write, this is one of the few times (perhaps the only time) I will prime your creativity. The exercise that follows is called person, place, and plot, and as far as I know, I invented it. I like it because it works. Right now, write down three numbers between one and ten, repeats are allowed. Now look at the columns below, and you will find that you have a random character, plot device, and setting. Now just find some way to fit all of those together, and start writing. I know this won’t work for all of you, but if it works for me, I bet it can work for you too. If you don’t like leaving things to chance, you can just find three things on the list that interest you. However, it’s more fun if the three prompts have some distance between one another.

As a final note, all of these are “mainstream” figures, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative and move them into a fantasy world. In fact, I would love to see someone write about a construction worker in a castle. Maybe its magical, or haunted? Maybe his daughter’s missing, I don’t know. (3,4,7)