The following prompt is from one of our Writers in the Grove members for our NaNoWriMo prompt-a-day project for November 2016.
A little fantasy fun prompt today:
Her horoscope read, “You will meet the love of your life today. Be open and ready to embrace it.”
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I’ve set a digital clock on my computer and phone to ping at the top of every hour. This reminds me to stand up and move.
While I will work through it if I’m in the middle of a writing burst, when the idea is complete, and it is safe to walk away, I will do so for at least five minutes.
Scientific research as shown that sitting for long periods of time is just about as unhealthy as smoking. Writing for 60-90 minutes without moving for only 30 days won’t be the death of you if you are regularly active, but consider a little movement to keep the juices flowing inside your body as well as your mind.
Go make a cup of tea, go drink a glass of water, walk around the room, or to another room and back. Don’t let yourself be distracted by walking into the kitchen or laundry room and seeing something that needs doing. Just move around.
Some writers stand up and do jumping jacks or squats for a few minutes. Many will stretch. Do something upright for just a few minutes once an hour.
You will return to your writing with more energy, a better ability to focus, and possibly a new idea for your story.
You are in the final stretch, so keep stretching.
You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.
The following prompt is from one of our Writers in the Grove members for our NaNoWriMo prompt-a-day project for November 2016.
Your main character loves someone, but find themselves in a situation where they must betray them.
Check out our list of prompts for even more inspiration.
The key to NaNoWriMo is the word count. Meeting the goal of 50,000 words. The best way to get there is to not edit, to not fix spellings or grammar, but to just keep the words coming.
There is another good reason not to edit. It is a distraction.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the wavy red line under a word and I’ve paused to fix it – after all, it’s just a right click and select the right word – and lost my train of thought. It can happen that fast.
The mistakes will still be there when you come back to edit. Just keep writing. The world will not come to an end because you mizpelled a word or messed up a tense. Keep going. You’re almost done. Stay on pace, stay on track, you can do it.
Note: According to Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo and author of many books including No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, a good proportion of NaNoWriMo participants use procrastination to stall until the last four to six days of the month, then throw themselves into a frenzy to complete the 50K word count competition on overdrive. Even if you have been slacking, it is possible to write more than 10K words a day, if you stop editing and get out of your own way.
You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.
The following prompt is from one of our Writers in the Grove members for our NaNoWriMo prompt-a-day project for November 2016.
How about a tribute to the Postal Service?
The envelope in the mailbox was to the wrong address, but the return address caught her attention.
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NaNoWriMo isn’t about writing just one thing. It is also a time for experimentation, which can also spice up the chore of your 1,667 words a day. Try experimenting with point of view.
Write a scene told from the perspective of the main character, written in third person.
Write the scene as told from the perspective of an omnipotent narrator.
Write the scene as told from the perspective of one of the other characters.
Write the scene as told from the perspective of one of the animals nearby, a bird, cat, dog, snake.
Write the scene in first person.
Which works better? Should you change your story’s point of view? Or keep it? Either way, it mixes things up for a writing session, and helps you see your story from another perspective.
You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.
The following prompt is from one of our Writers in the Grove members for our NaNoWriMo prompt-a-day project for November 2016.
A little mystery prompt?
She picked up the large, gold magnifying glass from the desk.
Check out our list of prompts for even more inspiration.
Have you included some cliffhangers in your story? Cliffhangers are the moments in a movie or television show when there is a cut-away from the action, often for a commercial, and the viewer is left hanging, anxious about what will happen to the hero.
Cliffhangers are common writing devices, but they work. In a novel, these are found between scenes and chapters, but also between paragraphs, pulling the reader through the story to find out what happens next.
Where are your cliffhangers? Are they critical plot points or have you thrown in a few throughout the story to keep the reader on edge, eagerly turning page after page?
If you don’t have any, start adding them. Write them in. They add tension, conflict, and drag the reader through the story.
The key to a good cliffhanger is how it draws the reader into the story. They are a part of the action. They want to know what happens. A successful cliffhanger is one written to make the reader a part of the story, so they feel like they are the ones pushing or chasing the story forward.
You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.
The following prompt is from one of our Writers in the Grove members for our NaNoWriMo prompt-a-day project for November 2016.
Time for a weather prompt.
The chill outside crept through her skin like it came from her bones.
Check out our list of prompts for even more inspiration.
Writers can make a moment last pages, even a whole chapter. Or they can make a sentence last a week.
As you work on your novel and stories, consider how you use time. Stretch it to make a moment last, compress it to add tension or skip the story ahead.
Consider adding a race against time element to your story. The clock is ticking and your hero has only so much time to accomplish the task and save everyone.
The groundbreaking television show 24 told the story in real-time, so to speak. Each hour increment in a 24 hour period represented 60 minutes of the story line. They even used a clock to help track the hour during each episode. It was an exciting story device that kept the viewer on the edge of their seat as the drama raced forward.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor and his companions and the other characters in the stories can shift between time within a few seconds not just on this planet, but across multiple planets and galaxies. In the finales of Season 4, the time traveling machine called the Tardis was controlled to dial through time, allowing the Doctor and Donna to watch an event that could take thousands or millions of years to complete, helping the viewer experience it with them, adding drama to the story line. In the book and BBC show, Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett, young kids discover a woman who can travel through time with a shopping cart, and go back and forth to World War II to prevent a bomb from exploding in their 1990s time period. Creative manipulation of time lines in stories is found everywhere, helping not only add drama, but to also help the reader understand what’s going on.
As you write, ensure the reader is with you on the passage of time. Do they track that it has been minutes or years between scenes? How have you made that clear?
It’s challenging to keep a reader on track with your creative manipulations of time. Flashbacks, backstory, dream sequences, future thoughts, movements of time between scenes…work it carefully, dragging the reader through the space time continuum.
Help them keep up with the time and the pace of your story, but have fun with how you use time.
You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.
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