Hello hello, and welcome to Planning Month (PlanMo)! October is the time to prepare for National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) in November, and we hope the activities we have this month will help you with that.
In the PlanMo club, you can start your own thread. In your thread, record your responses to the challenges, so you can refer back to them when writing later. Or you can record your responses in your NaNo thread! You can work through the following challenges at your own time and pace. Feel free to do as many or as few of them as you want.
(There may be some badges for those participating, and that's just an extra incentive to give this a try!)
Here are the challenges for the month.
Main Challenges
Elevator pitch
An elevator pitch, elevator speech, or elevator statement is a short description of an idea, product, or company that explains the concept in a way such that any listener can understand it in a short period of time. Describe your novel as though it were an elevator pitch.
Character & Location List
List down all the characters and locations that will or might appear in the story. Include some that seem unlikely, but might for example be a cool setting to add to a scene that needs some spice. You could also include some names or general descriptions for supporting/background characters that you might need in a hurry.
Main Character
Write a few paragraphs about who your main character is before the novel starts. Not what they look like or what they do, but who are they on the inside? What do they believe? Want? Where are they in their life? (Why is the plot of this book you're about to write going to change them?)
Side Characters
Write a few paragraphs about the motivations of your side characters. Why do they want certain things? What will getting/achieving those things mean to them? What fears do they have? What do these characters add to the overall story?
Most challenging character
Describe which character you think will be the most challenging to write. Plan how you will rise to that challenge! Do they need extra research? How might you tackle the scenes they are in differently to other scenes?
Question Game
Ask and answer questions! This is a great way to get to know other NaNoers and their projects, and to share a bit about your project as well! Some questions could lead you to think more deeply about a part of your project, or they could be fun and silly. Check out this thread for more details.
Vibes
Post the vibes of your project! This could mean playlists, moodboards, sketches, aesthetic food arrangements, anything. Feel free to add a couple sentences explaining why what you post fits the vibes!
Extra Challenges
Inspiring Music
Use the media code to put in a song that will inspire you to write this story when the going gets tough. It could be something that reminds you of the location your story takes place in, one of your characters, or just a good motivational song!
- Code: Select all
[media][/media]
Inciting Incident
What is the change that occurs in the main character's life that forces them into the story? For example, in the Aesop's fable 'The Sick Lion', the lion's old age causes him to be unable to hunt prey. This leads to him deceiving prey animals into entering his den by spreading the news that he was very sick, which sets up the entry of the story's 'hero', the fox. In another fable, 'The Dog and the Shadow, the inciting incident is when a dog snags some meat from the butcher's shop. Because he had the meat, he was deceived by his own reflection (of a dog holding meat) to think there was another dog in the river with a treat, which leads to the main event of this very short tale.
Character questionnaire
Fill out the following questionnaire from the NaNo site about at least one of your characters, though the more you do the more prepared you will be. @Spearmint will be drawing one character each for the first five people to fill out this questionnaire and post a link to it in this thread!
Spoiler! :
