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Thanks to Greenville Tech’s Library for a great first write-in tonight! It was a great success with 15 wrimos attending and getting the work done!

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Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: Break Your Goal Down into Bite-Sized Pieces

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, author Emily X.R. Pan is here to share her advice on how to overcome some of NaNo’s obstacles:

There are a few things about NaNoWriMo that are true for me every single year:

It completely reinvigorates my writing practice.

It challenges me.

It’s absolutely daunting.

The first point: I always refer to my writing as a practice. It works your brain just like a muscle training to lift more weight, or to play a piece on the piano. The more we practice, the stronger our writing muscle. NaNoWriMo is like a month-long boot camp.

Number two: No matter how many years I’ve spent writing book-length projects, it never gets easier. It’s my primary job now, and it’s still a struggle. Just like a marathon challenges a runner in good shape, NaNoWriMo challenges even those who write all the time.

Finally: We’re all doing this for the same reason. We want to finish a draft of a novel. Whether it’s your first book or your twentieth, there’s always the nagging question: Can I do it? The answer is: Yes, absolutely. Believing it is half the battle.

I guess I’m following the rule of threes in this blog post. So here are my three favorite tips from my years of NaNoWriMo-ing:

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For if you happen to need it.

7 Fun Tips to Write Your Novel With Dropbox Paper

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Dropbox, a NaNoWriMo 2017 sponsor, is a connected space to create and ideate together. Today, the Dropbox team shares a few fun tips for writing your novel this November with their new writing platform, Dropbox Paper:

Sometimes the hardest part about writing is just getting started. That’s why you might try using Dropbox Paper—a workspace that traces its roots back to NaNoWriMo. Simple and free from distractions, it’s the perfect place to just start typing, working out early ideas and getting your first few chapters on the page. Here are seven ways Dropbox Paper might make starting your novel a little less scary.

1. Get inspired.

The creative process doesn’t have to start with words on a page. If you need a little inspiration first, Paper can help. Paste a link in a Paper doc, and Paper will magically display the full post or video. Maybe you want to include a tweet from your favorite author, or add a Pinterest board to visualize your novel’s setting. You’re going to procrastinate on Instagram anyway. You might as well take advantage of it.

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NaNo Prep: Don’t Just Write a Novel — Tell an Amazing Story

November is fast approaching, and with it comes plenty of great advice from around the NaNo community on how to create your novel. Today, author Dinty W. Moore shares his thoughts on one of the most challenging questions asked of any writer: what’s your story really about?

Why do people read books? Why do people stream Netflix long into the evening? Why do people sit for hours in a coffee shop chatting about their co-workers?

The answer is simple: we love a good story.

With NaNoWriMo just days away, now might be the best time to remind ourselves what constitutes a good story—or better yet, what is it that makes a story absolutely compelling. The goal for our NaNoWriMo month shouldn’t be merely to write a novel in 30 days. The goal should be to write a novel that folks are clamoring to read.

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How to Make Your Descriptions Less Boring

We’ve all been warned about the dangers of using too much description. Readers don’t want to read three paragraphs about a sunset, we’re told. Description slows down a story; it’s boring and self-indulgent. You should keep your description as short and simple as possible. For those who take a more scientific approach to writing fiction, arbitrary rules abound: One sentence per paragraph. One paragraph per page. And, for god’s sake, “Never open a book with weather” (Elmore Leonard).

But what this conventional wedding wisdom fails to take into account is the difference between static and dynamic description. Static description is usually boring. It exists almost like a painted backdrop to a play. As the name suggests, it doesn’t move, doesn’t interact or get interacted with.

There were clouds in the sky. Her hair was red with hints of orange. The house had brown carpeting and yellow countertops.

In moderation, there’s nothing wrong with static description. Sometimes, facts are facts, and you need to communicate them to the reader in a straightforward manner.

But too much static description, and readers will start to skim forward. They don’t want to read about what the house looks like or the stormy weather or the hair color of each of your protagonist’s seventeen cousins.

Why? Because they can tell it’s not important. They can afford to skip all of your description because their understanding of the story will not be impacted.

That’s where dynamic description comes in. Dynamic description is a living entity. It’s interactive, it’s relevant. It takes on the voices of your narrators and characters. In short, it gives us important information about the story, and it can’t be skimmed over.

So how do you make your description more dynamic so that it engages your readers and adds color and excitement to your story? Here are a few tips.

(I have a TON more tips about setting and description. These are just a few. But I’m trying to keep this short, so if you have any questions or want more advice about this, please feel free to ask me.)

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The Right Tools Make All the Difference

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Dabble, a NaNoWriMo 2017 sponsor, is a writing platform designed to help you become a better novelist. Today, writer John Wilker shares his experience with searching for the “Holy Grail” of writing platforms:

The hunt for the perfect writing platform is right up there with The Holy Grail in terms of likelihood of ever being completed, but it’s still a worthy cause for those who take up the challenge.

I’ve tried my hand at NaNoWriMo for years, lots of years, using everything from Word and Open Office, to apps that are no longer on the market. Last year I won my first NaNoWriMo using Scrivener. Maybe I’d have won no matter what I used, maybe Scrivener was the secret sauce, who really knows? You might think that winning NaNo would mean my quest had come to an end, but you’d be wrong. The search is eternal, and like any good plumber it’s all about the breadth of tools at your disposal––not everything needs a plunger. (I assume plumbers believe this, but am not one hundred percent sure.)

Enter Dabble.

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Word Counter - Not only does it count the number of words you’ve written, it tells you which words are used most often and how many times they appear.

Tip Of My Tongue - Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t figure out what it is? This site searches words by letters, length, definition, and more to alleviate that.

Readability Score - This calculates a multitude of text statistics, including character, syllable, word, and sentence count, characters and syllables per word, words per sentence, and average grade level.

Writer’s Block (Desktop Application) - This free application for your computer will block out everything on your computer until you meet a certain word count or spend a certain amount of time writing.

Cliche Finder - It does what the name says.

Write Rhymes - It’ll find rhymes for words as you write.

Verbix - This site conjugates verbs, because English is a weird language.

Graviax - This grammar checker is much more comprehensive than Microsoft Word, again, because English is a weird language.

Sorry for how short this is! I wanted to only include things I genuinely find useful.

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In the end stretch? Getting reading for December? Here’s some editing tips and tricks.

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Not just great for prompts, but check out some of the other entries on this website.

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Random generator on subjects to write on

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Generate the first line of a story

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As many generators as you could want, and then some