Madalyn Beck joins NaNoWriMo 2019

A lot has happened this year. There has been change galore and it’s been a little overwhelming. Through all that has been going on, I have found that I am able to dedicate more time and energy to the concept of my novels.

I’ve been writing this story on and off for a few years. Only this year, I truly realized that I had more questions than answers. How do these characters get from point A to point B? Or from point B to point A? I’ve had numerous scene ideas and the overarching plot, but there was stuff missing. Individual story plots!

Since this will be a trilogy series, I had to figure out what are the main plots for each individual story. That was the tough part. I had a general idea, but I hadn’t actually sat down, thought it over, and planned it out. To be honest, I never imagined myself the “plotting” type, but more and more I find myself questioning before writing.

Why Plot?

This was a question that had stirred in my mind for years. I never understood why people would waste their time plotting the story. Doesn’t it play like a movie in their head the way mine does? I’m sure theirs does, but the difference is that they know there is more to a story than just those scenes that are the lifeforce of the plot.

So for the first time after years of struggling to figure out how my story was supposed to play out, I decided to try my hand at plotting.

At first, I was like, what the hell?! I’m asking way more questions now than ever before! Why am I doing this to myself?

I dug myself into a hole listening to ideas from left and right; researching to see if the answers were floating out in the world. I was desperate to find the answers in order to proceed because the need was overwhelming to move forward with this idea while I had the chance.

That’s when it hit me… This is MY FICTIONAL STORY. Why the hell am I looking and asking everyone else to help me figure out the answers?

So I went back to basics. Where my story idea began.

My night terrors.

I closed my eyes and remembered the details. I focused on what my first ideas were when this idea jumped into my head; when these characters first started speaking and becoming full people walking around in my head. I reminisced back to the birth of the concept.

I wrote down those key points that I had always envisioned back then. On paper, they looked minor and insignificant. Like they wouldn’t add up to much of a story at all. And honestly, alone, they wouldn’t have which is why I was always seeking opinions of others – which only destroyed my original story in the long run. But once I began to fill in how things went from point to point to point, the masterpiece unfolded into something more than I could have hoped for.

Now I am a plotter.

Time to write.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins tomorrow, and I am a nervous wreck, but I have also never felt more motivated and certain in regards to this story.

It is time to start over and write with the door closed (as Stephen King would say).