NaNo Ten

Ten Things for the NaNoWriMo'ers

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

1. Characters: Novel I: Imagine -- my post about the three questions I use to create characters and conflicts; Holly Lisle's article How to Create a Character; and Kleimo's Random Name Generator, aka my favorite character name generator on the web.

2. Dialogue: Peder Hill's article on writing effective dialogue; Holly Lisle's Dialogue Workshop; John and Marcia tackle the problems with overly-polite dialogue in my post Protagonism.

3. Linkage: Freeware & Online Tools for Writers -- my lengthy link list of freeware, shareware and online tools; Margaret Fisk's massive and enormously helpful library of writing links; and Seventh Sanctum, my favorite online generator/writing tool site.

4. Miscellaneous: generate your own languages and a lot more with the scripts over at Chris Pound's Language Machines; break a writing block with The Bonsai Story Generator; get free writing software designed by a writer (science fiction author Simon Haynes) over at Spacejock Software; and for those moments when you've got a concept but no word for it, stop by Onelook's Reverse Dictionary.

5. Notebook: Another ten list for the Writer's Notebook; also my own Revised Novel Notebook -- a how-to project that still needs some revising and refinement, but that has my plot templates, character worksheets, example synopses, etc. To download directly in .pdf format, click here.

6. Outlining: Novel Outlining 101 -- a simple method I use to create a novel outline by timelining events as they will happen in the story.

7. Plotting: my virtual workshop Plotting with Purpose also has some links to other online articles, workshops and so forth on plotting; this ten list has plotting links and freeware.

8. Scenes: Scenes: The Building Blocks of Novels by Kim Kay; my post Scene Building 101 on how I compose novel scenes.

9. Setting: My post about online generators for Place Names; my post World Check on worldbuilding and how much I do.

10. Writing Inspiration: my post Courage; Creativity Portal's page of writing prompts.