Previously, I have not managed to participate in NaNoWriMo. My timing has been a little off. Each time I had just completed a book going into November, or had one that was mostly written. This year, I’m going to try to do coordinate myself with the event enough to write a book that month. For me, the goal is about 100,000 words, but that is because of the genre I write in and my desire to do a little cutting in the editing process.

So, in the last installment, we talked about creating a story arc from your idea, and the primary elements you needed to have. Here is a link if you haven’t read it yet. This time, we are going to talk about your characters, as well as organizing other things in your story.

There are probably as many ways to organize story elements as there are authors. Some go old school and pin items to the wall in front of their workspace. Others may use post-it notes. I write in the living room of my house, so those don’t work for me. I also have intricate timelines in some of my books… in fact, some of my timelines intersect in other books. So I have to track those as well.

The first thing I do as I begin to write is create a “notebook” in Evernote. There are other note-taking programs or apps that likely work as well… maybe even better… but this is what I use. Then, I begin populating the notebook with the details that I need to track.

Characters… As I create a character that will appear more than a time or two, I try to build a dossier for them. I grab a picture from the web… it’s just for me… so that I can look at them. I describe them… physical characteristics, as well as personality. Even if it will change through the story, I need a baseline. I also add significant events… maybe a marriage or divorce, loss of parents. Often, I will create a backstory for them. At a glance in their dossier, I can refresh myself on their character so that I don’t unwittingly change them.

Places… I do the same thing. For a house, I have been known to grab a Pintrest pics of an interesting house, business or other location and build up from there. I will add descriptions as needed as well. A location can be just as important as a character in that regard.

Because I’m me, I also add cars to some of my characters. If they drive something unique or special, I may include a file just for the vehicle.

Timelines can be pretty loose or very specific.

In the Dixon-Prince series, I use dates. So, I will check the calendars for a specific year, and use the date. I track those dates in a master Excel Spreadsheet for the series. I enter the date, and what happened then. Sometimes it’s backdating, such as in a character’s backstory. I include birthdays and anniversaries in those dates as well. I keep them organized by date for future reference. That is in addition to having special dates noted in character dossiers.

In Triple Cross, I included day and month in the book, but not year. I did track the year, but it was as a note in the margin for my purposes. That helped when I was “going back twelve years” and had to keep the timeline straight. Kids age, and since there were kids being born and growing up, I couldn’t just wing it on the times. The character dossiers have birthdays and other similar information, just like the Dixon-Prince books, they just aren’t completely identified.

Lies and Omissions is a little more open on dates. We have a start time, but aside from me identifying it as “the early 1980s” in the preface, there are no specific dates given. Oddly, I found that harder than either of the other ways to write. It gave me the most freedom to break up into chapters, but I felt the need to meticulously track the dates. I started out not doing that, but quickly saw the error of my ways. Again, character dossiers had important dates, and there were margin notes for when each action took place.

Honestly, each system presents challenges and opportunities. For the Dixon-Prince books in the future, I will continue with the same regimen, but for other books I likely won’t. It is easier, but limits the ability to break the action up into chapters. For example, in Unknown Caller (Dixon Prince 6) I had a flashback in the middle of a day. Luckily, it was an long and action-packed day, so I was able to easily cover three chapters (early in the day, flashback, late in the day). But that is seldom the case.

And the completely wide open arrangement I used in Lies and Omissions was hardest to write, and more importantly, to track accurately. I didn’t start with all of the dates recorded, so I had to build that out after writing the first draft. And I figured out that I had a lot of impossible timelines that needed to be cleaned up. Perhaps nobody would have figured it out, but I think it would have shown through as sloppy.

I have not really done the NaNoWriMo thing to very good effect since hearing about it in 2019. It’s been going on much longer than that, though. My failure to participate hasn’t been due to anything with the event. I think it’s rather cool. Instead, I have had poor timing.

For me, writing a novel is an exercise in chaos. When I wrote my first one (which I finished the first draft of in October 2019), I started out with a plan. It fell apart immediately. My characters had other ideas. Instead of the quirky sci-fi/fantasy novel I expected, I got a thriller. Hmm.

For this year’s NaNoWriMo, I plan on doing my writing in November. But, in order to do that, I will need to make a better plan, and stick to it. It will take more discipline than I have displayed thus far in my writing. So, the first thing I will do it create a plan, rather than creating characters and seeing where they want to go.

A good story relies on an arc of events. The basics are the same, but I would recommend researching story arcs for your genre. Here is a place you might start…

1. Exposition
2. Inciting Incident
3. Rising Action/Progressive Complications
4. Dilemma
5. Climax
6. Denouement

It doesn’t have to follow this, but this is the basic organization of most stories.

Sometimes, though, there are mini-stories within the major arc, so you might find that you have more going on. But you’ll still see similar basic steps in your story.

The first was for a challenge. The subject was confessions, and I have to admit that mine was pretty light… not the deep, dark secret for which they were looking. But it is funny. Now. Trapped in the Closet.

It didn’t get much attention, and I guess that’s because it hasn’t been promoted very much, but there was a challenge about animals, and I wrote about a dog I rescued. She was a wonderful dog, too. Little Orphan Annie is her story.

My father has snuck into some of my writing (as has my mother), but this one was written for his birthday. Often, in my old blogs, I would pen something to him each year. It is simply Happy Birthday, Dad.

The Culvert Pipe has become one of my most popular stories. I don’t remember much about the original incident, except what I have been told for years, but the conversations with my father are very much in my mind. Still. Often.

Again with a challenge entry, A Tale of Two Stories made me push to figure out what to write about bedtime stories.

First, the blog.

I used to have a few hundred readers a week. But, in February, FB changed their algorithm, and engagement from there fell off a cliff. In two weeks it fell to 5% of what it had been before. Oddly, I started getting a LOT of ads from FB offering to sell me traffic. Nice, huh?

Getting back to the level I was at before will take a while, but I want to start on that path. So, between now and the end of September, I would like to add 15 subscribers to the blog, and increase my readership from 2-3/day to 3-4/day.

If you weren’t aware, if you subscribe, you can get a FREE ebook. I even have instructions on Vocal telling you how to load it onto your Kindle device or app. Why, yes, I did just link them there…

Speaking of Vocal.

I only started on the platform a few months ago, but I’ve added over 60 stories. Some of the content is shared between here and there, but some isn’t. Going forward there will be more promotion of content from Vocal, but less shared content… I’ll tell you about it here, but it will be there to read.

Here is my profile…

Currently, I average about 7 reads/day. In a given thirty day period, I am hanging around 215-225. 300 is a pretty big jump, but I’d like to try to get there. in the last thirty days, I had 9 that were over 10 reads. If not for the dumb zero read days…

And Amazon Books.

This is the big one, the one that scares me. It is more important than the others, but the others can help drive this one. And it can help the book sales sustain themselves.

I want to sell 50 books in one month.

I have given away thousands of copies of my books. Each time, it has taken advertising that I had to pay for, and has resulted in an increase in sales… but usually not enough to cover the advertising. Offering up discounted books was actually worse. there wasn’t a big jump in sales, and the cost was not even close to covered.

Lane’s books on Amazon.

I do plan on doing some marketing, while I might offer a freebie (Planning Vengeance… so, if you are thinking of buying it, hold off… it will be free at some point in September, I think). the major push will be full price ($2.99) Kindle books. I mean, if you WANT a book in print, that’s cool, too. But the goal is based on Kindle books, and Kindle Unlimited reads.

As a side note, I make almost the same from a Kindle sale as from a Kindle Unlimited full read. It doesn’t matter to me which you prefer… just please give a review.

Making a hundred bucks is a pretty modest goal, but it is also a stepping stone to making the books economically viable. I enjoy writing them, and a few people seem to enjoy reading them. I also think I’m getting better at it. I do know that I would probably be better served to hire out cover design and a few other aspects of marketing, but I need a basis from which to do that.

So, buy a book or eight and then leave me reviews… even if they aren’t five-star. Even personal feedback is good. I’d LOVE to know people are reading what I write.

First, the easy and free one… it’ll only take a few minutes. Here is the sneak peek. My profile on Vocal Media.

I would like to reach a thousand total reads on Vocal by the end of the month. On 31 July I was standing at 779. Eight reads a day would propel me to over 1000. To help accomplish that, I will be posting up a few collections of the short stories here over the next couple of weeks. If you would take a moment and read a story or two, the 221 reads will go by in a flash.

It is an affiliate link of sorts. I get paid for reads on Vocal… but not much. The thousand reads will put me at $6 for readership. So, your reads will pay me six-tenths of a cent each. Obviously, it isn’t about the money…

The other goal is different… smaller, yet so much larger in multiple ways.

I wrote my first book almost two years ago. I set one goal when I published the first book, and so far have kept to it. I have put no more money in than has come out first. All of the publishing has paid its own way. I wanted to prove I could do it. If I could publish a book… or books… without spending money, then anyone could do it. I HAVE spent a small amount of money on promotion… very small. But I had to make profit first.

That has been incredibly limiting, though. I have taken advantage of free promotional opportunities and given away thousands of ebooks. That has resulted in sales equating to hundreds.

Now, I want to try to have a month where I make $100. It will take 50 books sold, or read on Kindle Unlimited. Fifty readers can smash this goal. Seems so easy.

The reason it is huge is that it will vault me up in the standings on Amazon. Right now, my books each hang out around #1,000,000 on the sales list. Honestly, while it is horrible, there are a few million titles further down the list. Getting several sales will push them incredibly higher. That makes them more discoverable.

I don’t want to get 50 sales in one month and then drop it… the longer term goal is to build sustainable sales. But to do that, I need to do it once. After they start getting consistent sales, they can start hanging out close enough to the top of the list that they are found organically when people search.

So… I’d LOVE for you to buy one of my books, and maybe even tell a friend. If you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, give a couple of them a read. And, as always, I’d love your constructive feedback.