I have never done NaNoWriMo.

I thought about it repeatedly when I was screenwriting, but it always clashed with paid work, and now I write all the time anyway. I even write pretty quickly, the gap between TGAW and Angelmaker notwithstanding. (To be fair to, er, me: in the time since TGAW was published, I have written three books, a screenplay, and assorted newspaper bits and bobs. It’s just that the books have got caught up in the slow grinding of the publishing/bookselling machine, which is a tad retro.) That is not to say it does not appeal to me any more. It really does. And one year, I will remember in around June that I want to do this in November, and I will clear the decks a bit. This year, though, aside from being the father of a one-year-old and the husband of a woman who works very hard, and having a few bits and bobs of paid work to do (like edit a book and write a short story and prep for a conference and… so on…) I’m also trying to go to the US briefly to hug everyone at WORD Brooklyn repeatedly and jump up and down and behave like an infant. Although that may have to wait until December, because inevitably the time I was thinking of going is that weird turkey-based holiday they have in the US which always falls around my birthday.

So I never get to NaNoWriMo, somehow…

But occasionally people ask me for thoughts on how to approach it.

I can only tell you what I would do if I were going into it now…

All right, this is me, checking out the basic rules. Heeeeere we go:

Oh! Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. I’m allowed to plot in advance. Cool. So here’s my first and most obvious decision – plan a lot.

Okay, you’re not going to stick to your plan. I never manage to plan rigorously and stay with it when I write. But it’s really good to know what you’re deviating from and why it was there, because when the new track goes wrong you can go back to the plan and say “okay, this was the point, so how do I use that to fix this?” And you can.

Also, when I say “plan a lot” I mean that you should know your moments. There will be several of these, and they’re less likely to vanish during the writing. You’ve got what Robert McKee would call your “inciting incident”, the thing which kicks it all off. Then you’ve got the first “oh, crap” moment, where the hero’s life changes and he or she crosses from normal life into the new world. Then you’ve got a string of reverses, each of which raises them level of tension (“I’ll call my friend, he’ll know what to do!” “Oh, no, he’s in league with my enemies!” “Wait, I can bring him back to the side of the angels!” “Oh, no! He’s actually the source of the whole evil!”). One big shift, and a moment of total committal, brings you into the showdown where all is revealed and everything is won or lost. Note that while I’m using pretty dynamic language to discuss what’s happening here, this applies to character-driven pieces – where the emotional journey is all and the actual physical action is negligible – just as much as it does to plot-driven stuff. (Incidentally: I would incline to go with plot-driven work in something like NaNoWriMo, because if you skew it slightly your characters will still feel solid and the action will still be earned – see below – whereas if you goof on an emotional level because you need nuance and you don’t have time to refine it, your story will feel wooden. But that’s me: you may be able to bullseye emotion first time out of the box and hold the line. People can.)

Regarding earning your wow moments…

If you can nail this, the whole thing will feel good. People reading, even as they point out that Bob dies in chapter two but mysteriously reappears in chapter five with new hair, will be happy. Earning your wows is vital. Basically, let’s say you have a moment where your hero finally pulls a gun on her enemy. That has to matter. It has to be seen to be the result of a long chain of events, and it has to have a significance for which you have prepared your audience. It has to be an achievement, or a reverse, or a moment of sheer horror as we realise she’s actually going to kill the wrong person and go to jail, or kill the wrong person and expose herself to threat from the real villain… We have to see causes, consequences, and above all we have to be straining at the leash either to stop her or to urge her on. Imagine this moment was live theatre: your job is to make it possible that at some moment during the play’s run, someone will actually get up and try to prevent the action on the stage from going ahead. So: eat your greens. In my experience of collaborative narratives, for example, everyone wants to write the final gunfight or the sex scene. No one takes the time to do the flirting, the buying of the gun, the training – and those things are the path which lead to the big moment. Without them, it’s just fireworks battering the reader, and that gets dull fast.

Next: structure is your friend.

Again, you don’t have to be tied to a shape; it’s just that knowing how your story needs to play out to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion is hugely helpful. I use the detective story template in my mind, because it’s simple, flexible, and powerful. If you work with it, it absolutely will get you where you need to go, and if you pay attention to its whispers, it will ensure that when you arrive your reader says “Oooooh!”

It goes like this: CRIME => INVESTIGATION => SOLUTION. Parts 1 and 3 are relatively straightforward. The hard part is 2. Consider an episode of House (because House uses the detective format in a medical setting every week, and rarely gets dull): the middle section is filled with mis-identifications. The witnesses lie, the doctor-detective stumbles and risks disgrace, the sickness-crime progresses to a new low, and lives are at risk. New suspects are found and dismissed, and then… epiphany. It was the one-legged man after all! But he has two legs!

In an emotional context, this plays out in exactly the same way: Roger has nightmares and cannot sleep. He knows why, but he will not think about it. He takes out his pain on those around him. Sally, meanwhile, tries to coax him to unburden himself. He lies to her over and over about his horrors. Back and forth they go, and abruptly Roger begins to doubt his own theory. Is it something else which troubles him? He confesses all to Sally. She is appalled, and leaves. Alone, he realises the truth about himself, and follows her to make it right. They meet and… what happens happens.

Or you can dial it right down to something like The Slap.

Or up all the way to The Gone-Away World, which has a detective story structure deep down inside itself. (Granted, you’d be advised to be a little more restrained; I took thirteen months over the first draft of TGAW and it was 200k words long.)

Which brings up another thing: keep it simple.

I am not in general an advocate of simple, in the sense that I allow my stories to breed complication upon complication – although they do generally have a single-sentence heart, as long as you can use a semi-colon. I don’t mean that you have to adopt a realist approach, either, just that this is a limited time gig and limited amount of space. You need to be able to recognise where you’re going and go there. Know the thrust of your story, say it aloud into the bathroom mirror, and let that statement be your guide. Anything which does not advance that goal, put to one side – weave it in later if you need it and can afford it.

And finally… voice and style.

I loathe the advice which says “write what you know”. I think it’s completely misleading. People immediately assume they can’t write fantastical stories because they live ordinary lives, or that they have to write about personal problems and worries. No, no, no. Try this instead: “write what you are”. Write from the heart, from your sense of self. If you’re confused about that, write your confusion. Make a metaphor of it. Express it. Write in a style which comes from you, too. If you are naturally terse, write tersely, and push yourself to expand where necessary. Don’t try to adopt a style which doesn’t feel like yourself; your mask will slip as you work. Write, and find the voice, and then when you’ve found it, print it out and stick it up over your computer and look at it any time you’re in doubt. Let one good paragraph tell you how your writing should sound. Then take that voice, that way of thinking, and make it your guide in writing the story. If you find you’re writing in brief, stark sentences, tell your story that way, but don’t be afraid to describe opulence; if you find yourself warming to it, to the idea of lush things, that’s great – your character and your story are about warming up, about desiring richer perception and experience. That’s the root of what happens. If you find yourself sneering a little through your prose, good. Your central character or antagonist feels contempt for opulence. Or you feel contempt for the character, that works, too. Let the writing be your guide, and don’t try to impose a false self on it. At the same time, don’t be afraid to tell it where it needs to go. You can bend the narrative to where it needs to go. That’s the skill of the job. But don’t try to lie. That turns story into words on paper.