The Summer Novella Challenge

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1. 
   

   Brigadier Creator
   Brigadier · May 9, 2019

   The Summer Novella Challenge

   
   
   novella
   [ noh-vel-uh ]
   a fictional prose narrative that is longer and more complex than a short story; a short novel.
   
   The Summer Novella Challenge is rather self explanatory. Over the course of the summer season of 2019, which I am defining as June 1st to August 31st, participants are going to write a novella. The process includes a division of developing your base idea, plotting and planning it out, and then writing the actual project.
   
   The first month will ideally be spent on planning, and the second and third month will be spent writing the story. You can plan and write at your own pace, but we will have the more official timeline. The pacing also depends on the word count goal that you choose and that all depends on another level of factors.
   
   The minimum word count for this challenge is fifteen thousand words and the maximum is thirty thousand words. This is a very comfortable range to fall into when it comes to task of novellas. During planning, you will have to make sure to find that perfect balance of content for the allowances of the word count. And when it comes to writing the actual project, you have to remember that you have a stopping point.
2. 
   

   Brigadier Creator
   Brigadier · May 9, 2019

   Planning Your Story
   June 1st to June 30th

   
   
   For this part of the challenge, try and make one Research, Writing Tips, and Writers Corner thread, in relation to your project. Here is a quick summary of the potential for these three types of threads.
   
   Research - start a thread about a topic you're including in your novel and not familiar with.
   Writing Tips - if you're looking for advice on writing a particular part of your novel at any point.
   Writers Corner - create to keep all of your planning details in place and gain feedback on your concept.
   
   All of the guides, templates, and sheets will be made available in The Planning Guide Index.
   
   Official planning begins on June 1st but you can start collecting your base thoughts on a thread within this club and on a Writers Corner thread.
   
   Remember when planning your novella that your characters should be strong with a personality fit to them and have a backstory strong enough to support them. Writers seem to most often struggle with with making their characters realistic enough. It's not necessarily hard to develop your characters, but it is very time consuming.
   
   Another time consuming aspect of the planning part of the challenge is developing a solid time line. Putting a lot of attention into the structural details at this point will make the task of writing the story less daunting. When you have a solid idea of where the story needs to go, where it needs to end, and all the details that need fit in between, the confidence level for the content really increases.
   
   Take advantage of the month that we are offering you.
   
   You will probably need it.

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