: Re: I'm not a great pantser; what kind of preparation do I need for NaNoWriMo? I'm very appreciative of NaNoWriMo's "your first step is writing a crappy first draft" credo, and I like the motivation

@Margaret427

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Perhaps an appropriate amount of prep work would be to establish your main character (or characters). Then you can put them into a series of situations and explore what happens to them, while keeping true to the characterizations you initially set out. Each chapter can be a different situation, follow the characters as far as you can. Situations:

Winning the lottery
Falsely accused of a crime
Gain a super power
Contacted by a dead relative
Diagnosed with a rare disease
Transported to a different time/place
Inherit an odd collection of antique widgets

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The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…

Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people's works).
Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

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Take a look at No Plot? No Problem! and follow every suggestion to the letter. :-D

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