Today's focus will be on plotting out your story from point A to point B and further down the road. How it happens is all up to you. There are multiple methods, so try not to feel stuck with doing any one option. If you're planning on "competing" in NaNoWriMo this year, you'll need to get from the beginning to the end somehow or another.
First you need to determine whether you're a pantser or a plotter. Would you enjoy jumping in your car and driving wherever the road might take you? If so, you're probably a pantser. You're the type that can just start writing from scratch and keep going and going. You should probably check out Chris Baty's book, No Plot, No Problem. He's the founder of NaNoWriMo and has geared the book towards the event. If you're doing this, I'd still recommend having a good idea of where you want your final destination to be. Without that, you could end up out in the middle of nowhere.
Perhaps you're the type of person who needs directions. If so, you may be a plotter. You probably make an outline before you start writing. You want to know where you're going and to have a general idea of how to get there. There's many ways of planning it out. You could keep it basic by just laying out where you want to go and how you plan on getting there.
You could try the Snowflake Method and let your outline expand organically and exponentially from one single thought. Here's the Snowflake Method in a nutshell.
Holly Lisle offers up some advice on Notecarding. With this method, you set your scenes on notecards and play with the order they go in until it fits into place.
If you're really into detail, you can try Phasing. This method is borderline novel-writing. Write a 5,000-word outline detailing each scene in your novel end up writing 50,000+ words when it comes to actually writing your novel.
NaNoWriMo commences in nine days. How do you plan on getting to the finish?
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