Rocking NaNoWriMo as a Planner

3 ways to plan your story — even as a panster.

If you’ve frequented the writing community for any length of time, you’ve probably heard about NaNoWriMo, at least in passing.

NaNoWriMo celebrates twenty years of dangerous writing and in these two decades, it has inspired and challenge hundreds of thousands of writers to write.

The goal of the event is to write a new draft of at least 50,000 words over the month of November. Or I should say, the main goal, since over the years, NaNo has added many different ways to take up the challenge.

You may revise a novel, write a collection of stories, write non-fiction, or whatever else you want — as long as you reach 50,000 words in thirty days. There’s many ways you can be a ‘rebel.’

I’ve been a rebel most of the years I’ve taken part, usually revising a novel rather than writing a new draft. But I’ve also written non-fiction and blog posts.

Whether you’re a pantser who takes an idea and runs with it, or a planner who ponders every step, NaNo is can help you get things done.

Rocking NaNo as a planner

While being a pantser is natural and intuitive, being a planner is often a journey. It is something you learn.

A pantser gets an idea and goes with it. There’s no time to waste, and the writing process begins is immediate and intuitive. You’d probably say, the best way to use your time as a writer.

It often takes time and experience to see that planning is worth it. That all that time and work you do before you write the first word of your novel is an investment, not a waste of time.

Planning often makes a story stronger, more cohesive and may save you a lot of time on revision.

I’ll be honest, it took me years to learn this, and I came to this conclusion only when I started writing novels rather than short stories. Planning often makes a story stronger, more cohesive and may save you a lot of time on revision.

There are as many ways to plan a story as there are writers, and truly I don’t think there is a right and a wrong way to do it.

If it works for you, then you should do it. I’m going to tell you what works best for me in hopes that it may help you to discover what works best for you.

1. Don’t plan everything

Many pantsers say that planning the story will kill their enthusiasm.

I’m not sure enthusiasm is killed that easily, but maybe it’s the pantser that survives in me that never allows me to plan everything. I’m not even sure I’d be able to plan everything in advance.

I don’t want to know what happens at every turn of the story. A direction is all I need.

When I start a writing project, I never outline it. Rather, I structure it.

I use story structure templates to build the skeleton of the story, so that I know (or I think I know — it works just as well) more or less where I’m going. I don’t want to know what happens at every turn of the story. A direction is all I need.

The story structure is perfect to give us that direction. It is so minimalist that it leaves plenty of space for adjustment.

Sometimes, I think pantsers are scared of planning because they think of it as writing the story without writing it. But I think templates do give a chance at planning the story without spoiling the discovery.

Personally, I think that planning at least a bit is the best chance at winning NaNoWriMo. Having an idea where we are going will help us weather those days (and they will come) when we won’t have the faintest idea what to write. That’s what planning is for.

2. Do figure out your characters’ arcs

Characters are the lifeblood of any story.

Stories exist because characters exist. Yet, I don’t believe we need to know everything about our character before we start writing.

I’ve tried to write down detailed character sheets for my characters. At a certain point of my writing journey, that sounded fun and logical.

It didn’t work.

I need for my characters the same manoeuvring room I give to my stories.

I prefer working on the character’s arc inside the story, rather than chase after any possible detail of their life, past, present and future.

The structure of a character’s arc is very similar to the structure of a story. There are only a few essential elements that you need to know in advance. All the rest can be adjusted while writing.

If we know how our characters will be morphed by the story and why, it will be easier for us to devise events and actions that will highlight that change. And this is really everything we need as we start our story.

3. Be aware of subplots

Subplots are strange beasts. A subplot may happen in any moments, no matter how meticulously we plan our story. They may take form inside the story even without us realising it.

Keep your antennae raised so that you spot the potential for a subplot as soon as it happens.

It is not always possible to plan a subplot in advance. Very often, they just happen.

That’s why I usually rework them after I’ve written the first draft. That is, once I know exactly how the plot unfolds, what every character does and what themes I want to tackle with my story.

Keep your antennae raised so that you spot the potential for a subplot as soon as it happens. Subplots are fantastic tools to show off the story’s themes, but they also tent to get out of hand.

Start disciplining them as soon as you realise their presence. Try to figure out their place in the story and their possible role. Keep them in their place, and above all, keep them useful.

Always keep in mind which is the main plot — and why!

I give subplots the same treatment as the main plot. I will work them into their own story structure, though always keeping in mind that they are ancillary to the main plot.

A modicum of planning will enhance your chances at winning NaNo, which means finishing your story.

We may be the purest pantser at heart, but sooner or later (certainly in the revision stage), we’ll need to structure our story.

That’s what planners do: rather than do it all afterward, they do a part of that structuring beforehand.

Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. She’s studied the 1920s (first the Roaring 1920s in America, then Interwar-year Europe) for the past nine years and she’s now becoming fascinated with WWI. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently.

She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/