How do you prepare to write your novels?

Every two days I have an excellent idea, which I then flesh out halfway before losing interest. I think I won't have a plan before I commit to a first sentence in November.

In most times I'm away from my room/apartment, I bring with me an empty binder... one of a fleet of such things specifically tasked to take whatever thoughts/plot notes I happen to be thinking at the time.

Occasionally I'll be inclined to 'plot out' stories- make far-reaching descriptions on what will happen during the course of the work, important events, and some such. This is how I planned nano in 06, but couldn't follow through because of personal issues. 07 was an experiment in free writing. Not sure what I'll do for 08.

A suggestion on where to start: all stories are elaborate tales of solving a problem. Whether this be bob going to the store for milk and being swept up by aliens, or Marec the Prince whose throne has been stolen from him by his jealous brother. What wrong are your characters setting out to right?

One could also look at the hero's journey for inspiration of a tale. A hero goes and returns to where he started having changed in some way. Does he have superpowers? A revelation that he was a jerk to his friends?

I'm a very linear person, so I start with a grid -- maybe five or six columns across, with each column representing a major character. Down the left side of the grid, I make entries for each decade or each year, and I record the major things that happened in that time frame -- births, deaths, major plot elements. When I'm finished, I have a handy one-pager that helps me spot issues with timing or potential plot conflicts. It also helps me think though background stories that got my characters where they are today.

Once the grid is pretty much filled in, then I start my plot outline. The challenge is to provide enough direction to get me going but still be flexible enough for plot discovery along the way. I just finished an 11-day cruise, and I had no computer with me, so my plot outline is all in "long-hand." It was good to rediscover that physical connection with my thoughts.

I could just dive in -- I've done it before -- but preparing for my first NaNoWriMo is creating this pent-up demand to start writing. I hope that will carry me through at least the first couple of weeks!

i think this is an excellent question and it's very timely because i was just talking about it with the short story writing class i teach at DVC (community college in Pleasant Hill).

the conclusion we came to is that all writers have a different process, but it is, as someone said in this thread, about balancing planning and allowing space for discovery.

the text i use (in addition to lots of short stories) is called A Short Story Writer's Companion by Tom Bailey, and it has a chapter on plot and one on process. the chapter on plot has a section on the differences between plotting the short story and plotting the novel. it mainly says that novelists do have more "planning" to do.

for me, i am not terribly linear and although this is my first novel and my first nanowrimo, i do write quite a bit...(memoir, plays, screenplays, poetry)

planning for for me involves maybe some outline of the first few chapters, but, since it's scifi, a lot of research and absorption into the world i want to create. i actually drafted out a plot synopsis narrative as one possibility, but i'm not attached to it. i definitely haven't decided on an ending. i have a pretty good sense of the central questions of the main characters and their motivations. i think there can be a danger in overplanning because for one thing, the fun of discovery gets lost, and in addition, this fun for us is really what's best for the reader! i am a firm believer that plot needs to grow out of character, and if we don't know our characters intimately enough before plotting something out, they might feel like they are being forced to act out a drama for our god-like purposes and not something that is in their natures. and of course we created them, so maybe we are god-like, but i personally believe the best way to fashion compelling fiction is to listen deeply to where characters want to go rather than having them be the tools of our plot, our themes, our metaphors, our great indictment of society.

I am giving myself this advice as much as anybody because i want to write a YA scifi novel with political themes that adults will find just as compelling. i want an interesting plot, themes, metaphors and i do want a great indictment of society! but i don't want wooden characters in service of all these weighty ideas.

that's why this process question is so important to me. thank you for posing it.

a friend of mine also suggested writing a short story apart from the POV of a secondary character that is stil in that novel's world as a kind of warm up activity. i found that useful. i might want to weave it into the novel, though, and i've already written it...is that cheating on my word count? ;)

so i think i'm going to take my own advice now and do some character profile questionnaires to really get to know them before november!

Every year i come up with a basic plot, characters, a rough outline, an idea of chapter structure, then at 10 minutes to midnight I change my mind entirely.

This year all I am doing is assembling a playlist of music... I imagine I will be spending 10 frantic minutes changing that too.

That's a really cool idea -- I might take you up on it! I've never seen anything like it suggested before, but I know it would help me out a ton, especially because there are some characters I still don't know enough abuot.

After a bad experience last year with lack of original names (I ended up with five distinctly different characters named Joe), I started this year with the Middle School YWP Workbook and a handy name book a friend gave me years ago. It doesn't have all the names, but for every name listed, it has the Kabbalistic, Numerological, and Runic meaning of the name and its influence on personality. I'm a little stalled at one portion in the workbook (hoping to break through this weekend at the Pre-Nano Planning session in Walnut Creek), but I now have all of my main characters named and an idea of their personalities.

Last year: poorly

This year: possible overkill

I've been noting down plot points and character ideas and so on since spring, and have sorted them out into 30-day chunks. It may make writing the novel more of a "what is today's assignment?" sort of affair, but I need that kind of guidance.

Still missing names for a lot of characters, so I'm going to mine my Spam folders for character names.

This approach served me very well last year. If It weren't for my time being aaaaalllll eaten up with having to move apartments I would have been well on the path to an early finish.

This year it's full bore gonzo for me, see how that treats me.

Candace...This is my first time, my "virgin voyage" so to speak. I now have pieces of paper, post-its all over my office...to remind which character is married to whom, who has children, what are their names, who has parents still alive, plot side roads. It's kind of exciting. Even my husband thinks I'm cool for doing this and after 40 years, that is not an easy feat. Keep on writing. Judy B.

I do nothing.

I have an idea. I find an opening scene from which to jump in. I jump.

My characters do things and go places I couldn't have begun to imagine when I started.

By the end, things are a bit rambling and I will end up cutting during editing (or trying to weave in some straggling storylines), but overall it works well for me.

If I try to plan (i.e. I know how the story ends), then I don't care about writing it. It's the reader in me - if I already know what it's going to do, then spending a month fleshing it out is boring. I'll skim things, or they'll become forced.

Instead, I let it unfold. The characters live their lives; all I do is type.

That said, I do have a cheat sheet of characters and relationships, otherwise I'll never remember details like dates or ages.