So, with today being the first day of October, Kait actually suggested that I do a little series of blog posts detailing my preparation I do for NaNoWriMo.

For those who don’t know what Nano is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. I was made aware of this auspicious occasion many years back when Derek introduced me to the concept. He actually wanted to participate one year and, having failed in prior attempts, thought bringing in a friend would be the motivation to take him across the finish line.

It wasn’t.

However, it got me into the process. So, the gist behind National Novel Writing Month is to get people writing. You have a full month to get 50,000 words to paper, word document, reed scrolls, human skin or whatever other material you like to use. And if there is one thing I learned from Felicia, in order to hone your craft you must constantly be practicing. So, I have found a lot of success and use for the NaNo competition. First, I have beaten it for… well… a number of years running now. And I certainly can feel the difference in my writing if, for nothing else, the 1,666 words a day limit is no longer daunting. I can still recall struggling until the late hours of the morning trying to hit my word count. Now, NaNo is more of a little vacation. If… vacationing was still work but just less stressful.

See, I like to use my November writing month to take on a project that’s less serious. These are my experimental stories. Ideas that are a little outside of my comfort zone. They’re genres I haven’t attempted. They’re concepts that may not be really great. Since you never truly know if something is going to work until you give it a go. And, just sometimes, it yields value.

See, the first Red Sabre story was a NaNo project. And you can see how well that turned out by checking out my second Red Sabre novel, out today! Get it on Amazon, Kobo, Kindle and whatnot!

But I’ve also written other things that will never see the light of day. Like my zombie/Japanese/anime story which shall remain unnamed and never fully explained. I’ve also written silly super hero tales, murder mysteries, subversive classic fantasy and much more. It doesn’t really matter. It’s practice and mashing up genres is a great way to fertilize the creative grounds of one’s imagination.

And that gets to my first step of preparation: figuring out what on earth I’m going to write.

This sounds a little grander than it actually is. I’m a “panster” type writer so I really don’t have much of a plan when I start. But I do have an idea. My first step is to find that one kernel from which everything is going to grow. Sometimes, it is after a conversation with Kait about story starters or ideas. Sometimes it’s a strange dream. Sometimes it’s because I’ve read something grossly disappointing and I’d like to take my own stab at it.

But what if you don’t have an initial starting idea? Whenever I get a flash of inspiration, I try to write that idea down and let it germinate in the back of my mind. Well, this year (like some prior years), I don’t really have anything germinating. I’ve got a couple of projects on the go but none of them are really NaNo material.

Besides, this can give me something to blog about. So, how do you create a story idea?

Focus on something that interests you. You are your first audience. If you, as the writer, have no motivation for the story then it’s going to be nigh impossible to finish. So, my first starting place would be asking myself one important question:

What kind of story do I want to tell?

There’s a plethora of genres out there. And just because you specialize in one doesn’t mean that you can’t explore others. Even if nothing else interests you, there’s a lot of subgenres that you can plumb. So, do I want to write a Sci-Fi story? Do I want to try something a little different? Honestly, the language of Red Sabre can get a bit ponderous and I do enjoy being able to throw myself fully into modern diction. So I would like to do something either modern or futuristic. I don’t want to do a horror story so I can cross that option right out.

Now I know Kait is on a bit of an urban fantasy kick, so that could be fun. I’ve never read an urban fantasy to completion. I’m not really interested in doing an emotionally heavy, character driven story. This is NaNo after all. So the other big modern genre is mystery. I have taken a stab at a mystery story. The result was… mediocre. So there’s certainly room to grow there. However, there’s also futuristic mystery. And considering the only thing I’ve enjoyed about the few super hero movies I’ve seen recently is the detective element, it is a consideration.

Alternatively, speculative fiction is all about commenting on modern issues by recontextualizing problems to examine them in a different light. It would be remiss to ignore the recent conversation about the glorification of police officers and the lack of scrutiny on their procedures to simply write yet another stock standard crime drama. On the other hand, writing a mystery that does not have the main character as a police officer could be interesting. It’s a fairly large trope in mystery and best highlighted by the Maltese Falcon.

Also, by setting the principle investigator as a non-civil servant can broaden the type of mystery I could explore. I’ve gone on some rants about how Lovecraftian fiction does not fit well outside of its time period. But what sort of otherworldly mystery could be done in a modern setting?

Yes, I think I may look at doing an urban fantasy mystery novel. Now that I’ve prepared my genre, it’s time to start considering general ideas and characters!