Earlier this month, I participated in NaNoWriMo 2020 with a goal of writing 50,000 words of my young adult book Realms of Magic, Book 2. As mentioned in Participating in NaNoWriMo 2020, I wanted to achieve 50,000 words by the end of November 2020. My goals were to strengthen the content, character developing and storyline I had already written. I set short-term objectives as I progressed through writing the book.
Challenges
One of the challenges I faced was maintaining the flow between Book 1 and Book 2. I had period of rest between the two books and I had to refresh my mind of the storylines and characters of each.
Another challenge was structuring Book 2. This included how I wanted it to begin, end and how the character arcs would move. However, I should not let this limit my creativity and imagination in the parts of the book I had already written. Therefore, I needed to balance progress and new ideas.
I overcame them by refreshing my memory of Book 1 and reviewing the content I had prior to taking a break and constructing character profiles. This allowed me to think in terms of how the characters would act and function in their minds. I broke down the Chapters I had and condensed them to create an outline for my writing. As a result, I was able to be more creative as I moved through the story.
Project
My personal goal this month was to write as much as possible of Book 2, Realms of Magic Series. Unfortunately, I did not get as far as I wanted to with regards to writing, but I was happy that I made some progress anyway. I succeeded in getting in the headspace of my characters and creating more dynamic relationships between the characters, after my preliminary character profiles. I found that the reality of Covid and being indoors meant that there were not too many distractions to keep me from writing.
I discovered that I was not limited by the plans of Book 2 and wrote very artistically and with a carefree attitude. I had amassed so much content, as well as some extra chapters but I’m glad I gave myself a rough outline to work with, but did not feel the need to stick to it fully. Some events did not need to happen too quickly and I could take my time and add more detail to create a more immersive reading experience.
By the end of November I completed 20,242 words, but I had created solid foundations to the storyline, especially the rescue of Nancy’s sister, Kristina. Nancy has now accepted her past, but needs to move forward and fulfil her destiny of saving her sister. Together, Nancy and Kristina will combine their efforts to save their family from further peril.
Thanks for reading
Thank you for reading and I highly recommend participating in NaNoWriMo. It helped me enforce structure into my writing and setting small goals in the quest of completing larger ones.
In the meantime, don’t forget to follow me on here and social media.
The Life of Sophie 