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3 Day Novel - Plotting Small

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Mary Love

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I stumbled across this crazy 3 day novel writing challenge for next weekend (and I thought NaNoWriMo was tough!). Like NaNo, you’re allowed to start with an outline, but unlike NaNo, there’s no specific word count you’re trying to achieve after 3 days, and thusly, no daily word count. Just as much as you can. From what I gathered, 100 pages is average.

I’m crazy busy right now, so I’m not really seriously considering it, but I couldn’t help consider it a little…

My first thought was: how do you plot a novel to conclude in or around 100 pages? Even with a good outline I tend to overwrite, especially in first drafts. My scenes bloat with new ideas as I'm typing. I feel like there would be so many loose ends after three days, even if I was aiming shorter.

Here's the challenge: http://www.3daynovel.com/

Anyone doing this? :D
 

BethS

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Assuming you're double-spacing your draft and using 12 pt type, 100 pages would equal 25-30K. That is a novella, not an actual novel. Just so you know. If you're single-spacing, then you're closer to novel territory. None of that may matter, of course.

Anyway...

I don't plot in advance, so my advice may not be worth anything, but it seems like you'd want to streamline your story as much as possible. Don't get caught up with subplots. Don't have too many characters. Start with a main character and a knotty problem, and plot out the story conflicts (reasons why solving the problem will be very difficult), add ever-rising stakes (what the consequences are for not solving the problem), have the character reach a moment of extreme doubt/probable failure, when all seems lost, and then the climax, where the character wins through to some sort of solution, and a resolution, which is how the problem is finally solved (or not).
 

Mary Love

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and then the climax, where the character wins through to some sort of solution

Ooo, sounds so easy when you say it like that but I struggle writing climaxes big time!

I digress.
 

jjdebenedictis

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I did the 3-day novel contest once, with no outline, and both the novel and the experience were pretty ugly. :)
 

xbriannova

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You can't rush art, unless you're Stephen King. Even ol' Stevie needed something like 2 weeks to produce a full-length novel at his fastest speed.
 

L. OBrien

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I think that how you'd plot it would depend. If you actually entered the contest and you're trying to win, I imagine that you could intentionally under-plot so that when you over-write it still ends up at about the right length, or keep a separate dump file for the new ideas so that you don't lose them but also don't have to deal with the loose ends on the fly.

If you're not writing to win, then I think it's sort of like NaNoWriMo where your draft is the prize. In which case I don't think it matters if it resolves (I know that for NaNo even when I hit 50k I always spend most of December and January actually finishing things). So even if it's not a complete story you've knocked out the first 50-60k of your story in a day, which is pretty wild.
 

jjdebenedictis

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It's worth doing if you think it sounds like it'd be fun to try (that's the reason why I did it). I wouldn't suggest doing it to try to get some quality writing completed, however, or even a rough draft. Stuff done on the first day might be salvageable...
 

BethS

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Ooo, sounds so easy when you say it like that but I struggle writing climaxes big time!

Very little about writing a good story is easy. But the ending should derive from the beginning.
 

L. OBrien

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I did the 3-day novel contest once, with no outline, and both the novel and the experience were pretty ugly. :)

I've also been considering buckling down and trying to do this (not as an official entrant since the deadline is passed, but for the hell of it), but it seems to walk a fine line between awesome and absolutely miserable. Would you mind expanding on what made the experience ugly/what your experience with the contest was for those of us who are on the fence? Like what does it look like to actually write a novel in three days and how does the time crunch change the process?
 

xbriannova

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Hmm... I'm beginning to rethink what I said about art... That it cannot be rushed.

It occurred to me when I was writing a post in my blog about when I was writing a novel for a different competition, and the deadline was looming really close.

My writing speed magically tripled and quadrupled even, the closer I was to the deadline and upon realising I wasn't as close to the end of my book as I should be.

So 1,000 ==> 2,000 ==> 3,000 ==> 4,000.

Sometimes, I experience a lesser effect of this on regular days. Going 'into the zone', when I would write maybe 100 more, sometimes 1,000 more words than usual. Sometimes because I was inspired, other times because I was making up for missing a quota on the previous day.

But it was something else altogether when I was trying to beat that deadline. I wrote several times faster, with the quality of my writing not deteriorated at all and arguably even improved, and without feeling tired. Yup, it's something else. I've taken to calling it entering the 'Writing-Nirvana'. I guess I've been influenced by the Buddhist side of my nation hah. Helps that I'm a Chinese in Singapore. I'm thinking that the 3-Day Novel contest could simulate the conditions to trigger it, because what it's offering sounds similar to what I went through last year, just more extreme. Simple logic dictates that I would experience an even deeper form of Writing-Nirvana that way.

However... I won't be joining. I have a day job that cuts into my Saturday, I teach tuition on Saturday, and I have no public holiday on Monday because I'm in a different country.

But, that won't stop me from experimenting with trying to attain Writing-Nirvana again on my own accord.

Then maybe next year, if conditions are right, I could always join up.
 
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LeftyLucy

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This would be interesting to try. I wouldn't be able to free up three solid days (plus probably two days to recover) at this particular stage in my life, but I'd be up for it when the time is right.

I once went on an eight-day writing bender that resulted in a 75,000 word novel. I barely slept or ate, I literally just wrote around the clock. It's the only time in my life that a story has gripped me like that. I used vacation time, cashed in favors, whatever I had to do, because I was obsessed and had to get the story out. The end result was not as great as you'd hope, given all the drama of creating it, LOL. It was okay. I actually sent it to a dozen or so agents and got partial requests, but no offers of rep. I've had it resting for some time now; I think there's a gem in there but it will take a lot more revision and for some reason I have a hard time revising this one. There was something magical about how it came to be, and I may want to preserve that exactly as it is, and not have it be publishable.

And no, I don't have any psychiatric disorders that cause mania. :) It really was just a weird one-off thing.
 

DancingMaenid

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But it was something else altogether when I was trying to beat that deadline. I wrote several times faster, with the quality of my writing not deteriorated at all and arguably even improved, and without feeling tired. Yup, it's something else. I've taken to calling it entering the 'Writing-Nirvana'. I guess I've been influenced by the Buddhist side of my nation hah. Helps that I'm a Chinese in Singapore. I'm thinking that the 3-Day Novel contest could simulate the conditions to trigger it, because what it's offering sounds similar to what I went through last year, just more extreme. Simple logic dictates that I would experience an even deeper form of Writing-Nirvana that way.

I think it never hurts to give other approaches a try to see what works, because yeah, sometimes you can be surprised.

Personally, I've found that writing fast doesn't help me. It might increase my overall word count, but my quality definitely goes down. I used to write a lot of fan fiction (and still do occasionally), and it's popular in fandoms to have various writing events with deadlines. Eventually, I decided to drastically reduce how much I did them because I found that what was happening was I was writing really fast to finish on time and just wasn't happy with the results. I'd end up wishing I'd written the story at a more relaxed pace (of course, part of the challenge was that there was not much time for revision with the fanfic stuff. You can always edit the 3-day novel after you write it. But I like having a fairly decent draft to work from).
 

jjdebenedictis

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I've also been considering buckling down and trying to do this (not as an official entrant since the deadline is passed, but for the hell of it), but it seems to walk a fine line between awesome and absolutely miserable. Would you mind expanding on what made the experience ugly/what your experience with the contest was for those of us who are on the fence? Like what does it look like to actually write a novel in three days and how does the time crunch change the process?
Well, my process was non-existent, so I'm not sure I can enlighten anyone on that. :) I had a vague idea and just kept typing and typing and typing. I'm not a seat-of-my-pants writer at all, but I became one that weekend.

The thing that felt unpleasant was the sleep deprivation on day three. I ran on enthusiasm and good intentions on day one -- it was really fun -- and I kept the momentum going on day two, and by day three I was getting too tired to care. I "finished" the book a few hours early and remember being really irritated doing my final edits leading up to midnight. Of course there were too many to fix, which meant I kept thinking I was done and then finding one more thing to change (so...just like normal edits, except not spread over a month :D ).

The novel was mostly incoherent. There were a few nice images at the beginning I might recycle someday, but honestly, all I got out of the experience was the adrenaline-laced fun of doing something utterly bonkers (and being able to say later that I did it).

I think it could be useful for a seat-of-the-pants writer because it would help train you to just go -- to get stuff on the page without self-consciousness -- much as NaNoWriMo does. Proving to yourself that you can do more than you thought you could is always useful.
 

jjdebenedictis

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And bragging rights. You wrote a freaking book in a weekend! What was your page/word count?

I think it was about 200 pages. I...declined to preserve that manuscript for posterity.
 
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