Yikes, it’s Sunday again already! How the heck did that happen?
It’s a busy time for me, but right now I think all times are busy :). I’ve got a report due in on Tuesday that I need to finish tonight because I’ve got no other time to work on it, I’m a few days behind on last week’s challenge, I had a wedding to attend yesterday and we had guests staying for the weekend, I’ve started typing up the genre challenge to post it but it’s going slowly, I’ve got a very important meeting at work next week that involves a lot of prep, and I’m typing this on my iPad at my son’s crib side while he refuses to go to sleep because he knows I’ve still got to tidy up all that mess he made today when I finally get to go back downstairs before I can start of my course work. Poor hubby isn’t faring much better as he’s working through his first father’s day. I think we’ll have to give him a do over when things are a bit less mad.

But despite all that I’m sure I can still come up with a challenge for this week. Still no new news on Camp NaNoWriMo, though it is supposed to be staring next month, but I think it’s safe to say something will be happening so let’s think about what we might like to write.

This week the challenge is to go back through the diary and pick one of these rough novel outlines I’ve been making you do throughout the year. You should have at least a couple. We’ll take one of them and spend the week really fleshing it out into something that’s ready to write.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday
People like to do planning in different was so I’m not going to set the order here, but you’ll probably want to spend at least two days on characters, a day describing the major conflict/bad guys, and depending on genre a day on your setting. This should give you plenty to be getting on with up to the last three days.
Friday, Saturday & Sunday
Personally, I like to go with the old Three Act format of plot outlining. Act I sets things up and ends with a major event or turning point that drives the rest of the story. Act II is basicially everyone trying to deal with what happened at the end of Act I, and just when you think things are finally going to work out another big event launches you into Act III. Act III deals with the fallout from the latest disaster and eventually everything is sorted out and the main character has grown or changed somehow from his experiences. The end. Or they all die, it depends how you like your stories. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying ‘three days, three acts, you do the maths’ :).

And now the baby is asleep. Yay! On with other work now. Until next time!