NaNoWriMo 2022 Day 6

I started the day with a three-block Cave, but after the first work block I finished writing the flashback scene I was working on, and now am on to *gulp* real scenes!!!! I also hit ten thousand words today, so that’s probably a nice amount of pre-writing to get into the headspace of my MCs before writing something pivotal.

I spent the next couple blocks updating my chapter planning worksheet with questions and prompts from writing books I’ve read over the last few months (The Last Draft, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Structuring Your Novel Workbook). Then I started filling it out for the first two chapters, as well as planning the setting and sensory details to include. (I particularly like the 5-4-3-2-1 sensory planning approach from C.L. Polk.) I like doing planning chapters in advance both as a way to think through what’s going to happen, but also to remind myself of the purpose, stakes, and goal of the scene so I can keep that front of mind as I draft prose.

I broke till after dinner, then came back for another pomodoro of planning, and finally a pomodoro of outlining. I’ve been thinking about this scene for months — which is the meet-cute (as such as it is in a space opera between enemies) — and really want to do it justice. I have just a few pivotal moments in the scene planned out, but needed to think through how she’d get from point A to point B.