I participated in National Novel Writing Month for the first time last year, without a plan and without much of a plot. An idea was there, but the words didn’t come as I had hoped. The good news is that I found in it an idea for a real-life project that may be attempted in January.
This year, I prepared for my novel several weeks in advance. I had a plot and began an outline. Characters came from nowhere. The outline became more detailed. On November 1 I began my second novel. By the second day, I realized something:
My story is not centered around events in the plot, but the words my characters say. The vast majority of my current 6,000 words are put into dialogue, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. My novel is not void of description; rather it does not rely upon setting. That might be due to the way my own mind works; I focus much more on words than on place, and in this project the words come out as dialogue.
Last year I couldn’t pull any sensible conversations into my story, while this year I struggle for anything but conversation. That may be due to switching from 1st-person to 3rd-person omniscient, or maybe because I have 7 central characters with no respite of thought in which to retreat. This may be a noisy novel indeed!
Incurable Curiosity 