Did anyone participate in the July Camp Nanowrimo this year? How did it go?

This is actually the first time I've actually managed to finish a summer Nanowrimo. I've completed the 'official' November ones a number of times, but the Camp ones are always harder for me to stay focused.

I found this one a little easier to work on—in part because I decided to use the word count to build my outline, decide on history, and write character descriptions and sketches rather than jump in on writing scenes.

This was my first time going this in-depth in outlining, and I'm finding that I am very much preferring this way of writing. Something about building the structure of the story and outlining exactly what is supposed to happen in every scene just really seems to work better for me than 'pantsing'.

Even at that, though, I fell behind in my word counts and had to stay up much too late last night trying to reach an addition 7k words for the full 50k.

Woohoo, welcome to the club, fellow detailed outliner! *high five* What book were you working on?

I'm calling it 'Tempest'—it's speculative fiction of a sort. Kind of a superhero story, but trying to keep it a little more realistic/costly as far as the powers themselves.

Have you found particular outlining methods that work best for you? (e.g. the Snowflake method, notecards, Scrivener, etc.)

I second the "welcome to the club" I haven't successfully finished a work of fiction yet, but my experiences both in the Technical Writing classes I took the last few years and with my fiction (working towards the goal ...) have led me to the conclusion that while it's entirely possible to over-plan, it's generally far more economical in terms of time and energy to make a strong plan before starting to write.


For the last year and a half or so, I've been working my way through "the snowflake method," and I've found much of it tremendously helpful, but some pieces of it (though I'm so immersed in coalescing my various notes right now I can't remember which) confusing, and since I already had an (old) outline I ended up with overlapping and not-entirely-consistent planning-material. Some dedicated software might well help with the problem of earlier steps' material being out-of-sight-out-of-mind, or might not.

If I had the patience to write (or, breaking out my typewriter, type) my per-scene notes onto notecards, that would probably have been helpful in this latest stage of hammering out the inconsistencies and neglected corners of my plans before I start writing.

Before I embarked on "the snowflake method," I was using a planning technique I call "iterative outlining," starting by outlining stories into broad arcs, then each arc into "sequences," then each sequence into scenes ... and that's as far as I ever got; I planned to "outline each scene by action" next. I now think that this was in general a sound method, but that the approach I took of working through each of the dozen-and-a-half or so stories on my series meta-outline at the same level before returning to any of them for the next level was not.

I did Camp NaNo, too! I had the goal of 25,000 words and ended up getting just over 32,000. It was great!

I've used a variety of methods in the past--the Snowflake method is solid, and I've used Scrivener as well, especially for stories where I'm piecing together different drafts or writing the book out of order (which I do a lot). However, for my current work, I've been writing straight plot synopses. They vary in detail, although because the book is long and complicated, they're usually 5k-10k-word synopses. I'm doing it this way because I need to make absolutely sure the plot of this book holds up all the way through, since it's incredibly complex, and I don't want to discover halfway through that my plot has holes. XD

I use notebook paper, Chris Vogler's "The Writer's Journey", and 3x5 cards for scenes. Each stage has a divider in the 3 ring binder and I make notes as I go.

The 3x5 cards are kept in a ziplock sandwich bag. Each day i sort them and put the one or two that seem most interesting on top. Through the day I glace at the cards and let my mind percolate. After work I go write that scene because I've been thinking about it for most of the day.

For larger scenes or chapters, full pages are useful. I note what has to have happened before that scene starts.

Fascinating! I'll try to remember that technique for when (God willing) I have an employer demanding most of my time.


Yes. That's why we "planners" plan: it's better and cheaper to make (or at least to fix) mistakes in a twenty-word logline, a three-page outline, or a ten-thousand-world synopsis than in an eighty-thousand-word novel (especially if it's in a series). If one could (as Robert A. Heinlein reportedly did) write salable prose on the first draft without them, the planning documents are only useful as marketing materials, but most of us make many mistakes in the process of developing our stories.

For my part, "the story in my head" has (long ago) grown to "life's-work" size, but after going through my Technical Writing courses and spending the last year and more somewhat-diligently trying to follow the "snowflake method," I now confidently say I can't afford to not plan, but on the other hand I can't afford to plan foolishly like I had been doing

It's lovely to hear all your different approaches to this! I am find that it's necessary for me to plot out my stories for the reason that I often don't have enough going on/enough subplots and the like to flesh out a full-length novel. I need to spend lots of time thinking it all through and fleshing everything out so that I know where and when I can incorporate secondary plots and characters without running the story off-course.


Thank you


This sounds pretty similar to what I'm doing for my current WIP—by breaking it down into multiple steps, I can focus a little better, but not be stuck working on just one part of the story at a time. I like to jump around from middle to end to beginning without worrying whether or not it will all be cohesive in the end.


I love doing planning by hand—something about writing it out with a pen/pencil helps me brainstorm in a way that feels more productive and I dunno, insightful? somehow than when I'm simply smashing out words on a keyboard.


I've experimented with the Snowflake method as well—I find it a little more restrictive than I like, at least for jumping in. I like to do lots of free writing about a piece to try to solidify it in my mind before actually trying to summarize it. And I still struggle with the 'elevator pitch' kinds of summaries.
I like the idea of the synopses. I should definitely give that a try at some point.