October Novel Prep Challenge

...or at least my novel.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but to anyone who is tempted to discount the value of freewriting (I sometimes do, but it's absolutely priceless when you're in a bind):

Today was amazing! I ended up spending significantly more than the allotted time, and by the end of it, I'd filled three single-spaced pages with ideas, theories, character observations, things I had doubts about, and things I definitely wanted to use in the story. It helped me to clarify what I wanted from the story, what I loved about it, what I hated about the plot I was forcing on it, and how I could change it into something I could feel proud of (or at least interested in).

In a little less than an hour, I beat down one of the biggest obstacles I'd been facing so far, and now I have a much clearer idea of where this novel is heading, even if many of the strings are still dangling loose.

I know everyone uses freewriting in different ways, and some people don't use it at all, but I've found it has endless problem-solving potential, even for people who are flawlessly organized and hate the mental clutter of it. Here's the way I do it:

I yell at myself.

I find a few problems or a few things I don't like, and then I write them down. This time, it was my whole plot, especially the way a certain development would isolate a character who plays best off of other characters. Then I tell myself how stupid that is, and I start tapping out "what ifs." Crazy stuff, mostly, but eventually one or more will seem interesting, and I can branch off from there and work out the plot progression and details, mocking myself along the way and having a grand old time. Those who are organized can use bullet points and sub-points and sub-sub points or web-graphs or columns to plot the progression of different ideas.

For me, it ends up looking something like this:

Problem: My main character is boring:

Freewrite: Okay, well that sucks a lot. What if she gets kidnapped? What if she was betrayed by her best friend? What if she was a he? What if she died valiantly? What if she got transported to the Shire? What if she got tangled up in a political intrigue? What if she didn't actually exist and was in fact a figment of a random side character's imagination?

And then I can just choose whatever's interesting and go from there. If nothing else, it's therapeutic. Making bulleted lists of things I wanted to happen, questions that needed to be answered, and problems or inconsistencies I needed to address was also helpful. No one ever needs to see it. In fact, I'd be a little horrified if anyone saw my freewrites, but getting down to business and confronting yourself about your own goals and your story's problems is an amazing exercise.

Anyway, tl;dr: freewriting saved my novel.

Freewrite like the wind, Preppers!

/SHOT