October 26, 2010 - Questions Answered Pt. 2
Got another set of questions asked last night, so I'm posting the answers here.
booths asked: My first one was, what's a good way of going about picking a plot idea if you have a million floating around in your head? I often get slammed with too many ideas at once, which can definitely be a headache, so I was just curious to see how other people handled this problem (if they have it at all!).
And my next one is how do you avoid writing yourself into, basically, a road block in your writing? How do you stay motivated?
My suggestion on picking a good plot idea is simple. Choose the top ten that are screaming at you. Not the ones that are whispering in your ear like Darth Maal, but the ones doing the Tango over your conscious and write them on paper. Just the premise. And if one of them seems like it's holding more resonance that the others, then pick that one for this month. And you don't lose the others, since you did write them down. You could end up with a series.
You don't. There's no tricks for that road block. Not really. They happen, either because you run out of steam or you get bogged down with school work or job or family. What you do though is simple. Write a brief description of what you want, maybe a paragraph, but go further. Go on to that next chapter. Writing isn't always linear, especially during NaNoWriMo. If you have a program that can keep you sorted on chapters, like yWriter or Scrivener, then go nuts with them. I use yWriter for my outline and notes. I hope that helps.