Word count: 3,332

Yep, it’s that time of year again. November: the month of novelling insanity. A race against yourself to a 50,000 word novel.

This is my third year doing NaNoWriMo. In the previous years, I felt like I’ve written decent, yet distinctly first-draft novels that have evolved over the course of the month.

This year, I feel better prepared for what lies ahead. Maybe it’s the experience of past years, but for the most part I feel better prepared because I’ve been outlining my story for the past month.

About 2 months ago, I came across the site Storyfix.com. It’s a blog about writing by US author Larry Brooks. For me, it started with a series of posts he wrote on story structure, and more recently an expanded ebook on the subject. He advocates a strong understanding of story structure if you hold any hope of one day being published. Obviously with such a bold statement, he’s got his decriers, but I’m with him on this one. He takes a lot of his story structure queues from the world of screenwriting, but they are just as applicable to novels. It’s all about story, regardless of the format used to deliver it.

Even if your skeptical or a by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer, I recommend reading his posts on Story Structure. You might be surprised what you learn, and even if you prefer to delve into the writing process without an outline, an understanding of conventional story structure will stand you in good stead for making the right decisions about your story as you proceed.

So as NaNoWriMo starts this year, I feel like I’m much more in control of the story I’m telling. I’m not blindly jumping into writing without knowing where the story is going, how it’s going to change and how it’s going to end. I’ve been making decisions about the major plot points of my latest novel for the past month, and slowly, scene by scene, filling in the outline to move the story from one point to the next.

And far from the writing being a tedious afterthought, I’m excited by this story, maybe moreso than my stories from previous years of NaNoWriMo. I get to focus on writing each scene to the best of my ability. I can focus on the emotion and conflict rather than wondering how this is going to get me to the next scene.

And even just in the first day, I feel like writing this way makes the prospect of 1,667 words per day a much more manageable task.