For our NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) prep series, we are drilling into each of the components of scenes:  description, action, dialogue, and thoughts/feelings. Today is action.

Action Is All About Verbs

The action part of a scene occurs when someone or something acts. They do something. It is all about verbs.

Action doesn’t imply, however, that your characters must be fighting, kicking, or running. They can drop a spoon, pet a dog, or kiss. That’s action, too.

Verb Are Complicated

I have a huge pet peeve about how writers talk about verbs. I cringe when I hear people who should know better say you should use “active” verbs and not “passive” verbs when they really mean “strong” versus “weak” verbs.

Why is calling verbs active and passive incorrect?

There is actually a case when active/passive is correct. In grammar, active and passive have specific meanings. If you do something, that is active voice. If something is done to you (by someone else), that is passive voice.

Example:

• Active:  Janie hit the ball.
• Passive:  Janie was hit by the ball.

Although passive voice does have its place, your main character should be as active as possible.

When is active/passive incorrectly applied?  The meaning gets stretched when it is applied to any verb with a “to be” form and -ing ending.

Wrong:

• Active: Janie hits the ball.
• Passive: Janie was hitting the ball yesterday.

Those verbs are not active and passive, but instead reflect the time when the actions occurred. Those verb forms are called tenses.

Sometimes you need to use the “weak” verbs to be precise about the timing of events and that is perfectly okay. Avoid, however, overusing them throughout a scene when the stronger forms of the verb will work.

Rant over.

Exercise:  Write a paragraph reflecting action. Check your verbs to see if you can make them stronger. Also, look for synonyms that may make your verbs more precise.

Example:

A collision had snarled traffic on the freeway, making Neri Clausen more than twenty minutes late on her first day as a deputy U.S. Marshal. As she dashed toward the Federal Building in downtown Dallas, something squished under her shoe. No time to assess the damage. She sprinted across the street, through the glass doors, and headed for security. After she skidded to a halt behind the man with the enormous white cowboy hat waiting to pass through the metal detector, a bad odor assaulted her. Dog feces. A brown smear encircled her mirror-polished black Chelsea boot. The brand new one she had paid a nonexistent paycheck for because she needed something both stylish and practical.

Crud. Literally.

The elevator doors closed behind her. She peeked at her boot again. The brown goo went deep into the detailing on the toe. It wasn’t going to be easy to wash off. She had seconds to decide whether to present herself to her new boss wearing fetid shoes or with the battered flip-flops she carried in her bag for a trip to the swimming pool later. The two other people in the elevator wrinkled their noses in disgust and inched away. Flop-flops it was.

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Visit our 30 Day Novel Prep Page for all the links.

If you are going to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, you are going to write 50,000 words during the month of November.  Let’s check the numbers.

Slow and Steady

If you plan to write each and every day, then that is 1667 words for 30 days.

How much time you will need to set aside every day depends on how fast you type. Note that I didn’t say write, but type. Even if you’re feeling creative and the words are flowing like magic, it takes a certain amount of time to set them down on the page. If you are a slow typist like I am, it will physically take you longer than someone who can type fast. That is why I never win sprints or word wars. I – type – slowly.

Let’s do the numbers. I can type between 500 and 600 words in an hour. That means I will need three hours every day to achieve that goal. That doesn’t seem like much if you are thinking the average work day is eight hours, but I already have a busy life. Things are going to have to go.

Exercise:  Keep track of how many words you write per hour over the next few days. Then calculate how many hours you will need per day to write 1667 words. Make a schedule now for setting that time aside.

Tip:  To be even more organized, write the exact hours you are setting aside for NaNo on a calendar or into a planner.

Reverse NaNo

November is a tough month because of the holidays. There’s a lot going on at the end. If that is the case for you, consider doing a reverse NaNo. Start piling on the words at first, with roughly 3000 words a day for the first week, then gradually taper off (link shows exact number you will need per day). So, for me, that’s roughly 5 to 6 hours a day for the first few days.

Even if you don’t do a full reverse NaNo, piling on the words at the beginning may make it easier to achieve your goal.

The Scenic Route

Let’s take this number crunching one more step.  If the average length of a scene in a  novel is 750 to 2,500 words, you will be writing on average 1 to 2 scenes per day. That ends up being roughly 30 to 60 scenes over the full month.

At this point you probably know whether you are a pantser (discovery writer) or if you outline ahead of time (planner or plotter). At the very least, you’ve probably heard proponents of both camps. The reality is, however, writing that many scenes is a daunting task, so a bit of planning now makes it more likely you will succeed.

Dear Plotter,

I’m not worried about you. Charge ahead with your outline. You probably had your outline written last month, right?

Dear Pantser,
No need to be scared. Don’t call it an outline, call it a plan. As you know, plans can change. Or call it a recipe. You always tweak recipes when you cook, right?

Exercise:  Get a calendar for the year(s) your novel covers. Start a timeline of events both during backstory and after the novel begins. Being able to picture the events unfolding over time will help keep the words flowing. Plus, you won’t end up with eight day weeks (has happened in real novels) or pregnancies that last three months.

Time to map out that novel!

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Visit our 30 Day Novel Prep Page for all the links.

Research for a novel can be a real bear because it is critical to get the facts right for your readers, but too much can derail your writing completely. How much research do you need and when should you do it?

Maybe you think you don’t need to do research at all. It’s fiction after all. You make it all up in your head, right?

A few months ago while engrossed in a mystery novel, the main character stated the official language of Hong Kong was Mandarin. It popped me right out of the story like I’d hit the button of an ejector seat. The official language of Hong Kong is Cantonese (don’t ask how I remember that). How did the author make a mistake like that? I did finish reading the novel, but in a corner of my mind I started questioning everything about it. If the author was that sloppy, what else was wrong? It destroyed my enjoyment of the book.

What should you research prior to writing?

First of all, you should research the big items that move your plot.

For example, unless you are working in the same field as your protagonist, you will probably need to investigate the job description of whatever profession you chose for them. Find out what kind of education they would need, where they might work, jargon specific to the job, etc. If you have a friend or family member in that or a similar field, it might be a good time to write, text, or pick up the phone. You need to get it right or you will hear from every expert in that field.

Setting is important, so you need to review that. Do you have a concrete description of your setting in place?

Also, if you are going to add some special details to add depth to the story,  get those sorted. Yesterday I listened to a virtual talk by mystery author Ian Rankin about his new book, A Song for the Dark Times. He mentioned featuring a World War II internment camp in the book. If you are going to write about historic events or places, it would be a good idea to research those ahead of time, especially if your research will require trips to a university library for scholarly works.

Tip:  Looking for different ways to learn more about a topic? Consider podcasts. Find one or two podcasts by experts in a field and listen while you exercise or do housework. Yes, you can sometimes multitask successfully.

Should you research while writing?

Ever clicked on your browser to look up a synonym of a word and come back 45 minutes later after you found yourself watching cute cat videos? Yes, the internet can be a distracting place. For the most part, you should plan to limit the amount of internet research you do when writing for an intense deadline like NaNo. Many writers turn off their browsers completely.

If you have smaller points to fill in, there are ways to remind yourself to come back later and continue writing. Journalists use the abbreviation TK, which is shorthand for “to come.” You can also use your own code, but make it something that it is easy to locate via the “find” command.

“You’re going to Hong Kong? How will you communicate?”

“Don’t worry, I’m fluent in {{add language of Hong Kong}}.

Need to check something that is critical to your next scene, that you need to clarify to keep writing? Set a timer before you start your search.

Caveats

1. If you enjoy research, sometimes you want to share all the exciting things you found. The problem is that sharing can turn into an information dump, which will clog up your story and turn off readers. All those wonderful things you find out should support your story, but not weigh it down.

Visualize an iceberg. Your readers should see the exposed tip as if that’s all you created. You see the entire thing, including all the massive amount of material hidden under the water. That hidden mass is what stabilizes the tip and makes it work properly, but they don’t need to know it is there.

2. Sometimes the true facts just won’t work. Then it is time to fabricate. Don’t be afraid to own that,

3. Nothing is finer than reading a well-researched book that help you learn something new in the midst of a satisfying story. On the other hand, if you spend years and years gathering the background material, it can get in the way of actually doing any writing. Only you can determine the balance, when you are done and when you are ready to write.

Exercise:

The next time you are reading a novel, pay attention to the facts and details that the author shares. Do they talk about downturns in the economy, nuclear power, or how to get fingerprints off a cell phone? You might want to even highlight those passages. Begin to be aware of how much fact goes into writing fiction.

Now go do some research!

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Visit our 30 Day Novel Prep Page for all the links.