Write a novel

The ultimate list to stay motivated, part II

1. MONSTERMOTIVATION.DE

monstermotivation.de is a German platform and should only be recommended if you actually speak German. Smaller language skills should be enough, the monster-letters can also be translated with deepl.com.

The point is that you adopt a monster and then "feed" it with written words. What can be a bigger motivation than a monster smile?

2. 3 DIGIT CHALLENGE

With the 3 Digit Challenge you can increase your motivation and increase your wordcount.

It goes as follows: Person A writes the last three digits of their wordcount, for example 406. Any other person then writes 406 words and leaves the last three digits of their wordcount. She writes "taking x (here 406), leaving y (last three digits of her new wordcount).

This challenge exists in the NaNoWriMo forum, there it is great because there are many active people and you don't have to wait all the time, but of course it can also take place in an author chat group.

You can do the challenge in pairs or with more than 200 people, the number is entirely up to you. In the NaNoWriMo forum, the comments are correspondingly impersonal and consist (almost) only of "taking x, leaving y", but in a smaller group, which you can also form and create on the NaNo site, the comments are more personal.

3. SENTENCE OR DRABBLE CHALLENGE

First things first:
A drabbel is a scene or part of a scene, i.e. a literary text. It must be exactly 100 words long. You can post it in NaNoWriMo forums or on writing.com. You can also write it for yourself, of course.

Now, what is a sentence challenge?
This challenge can be done live and in person or in chat groups.
The first person writes or says a sentence, such as "Peter is looking forward to Thursday." The next person says a sentence where the first word must start with the first letter of "Thursday," the second word with the second letter, and so on.
So you always write/say a sentence where each word starts with the letter of the last person's last word.

In terms of Drabbels, this does NOT mean that you have to write a Drabbel for a sequence of a hundred letters (even if that would be a nice idea for sentence challenge experts, of course...), but:
Person A writes a Drabbel and publishes the last five words. Person B has to take the last five words as prompt for his own drabble and then publish his own last five words, person C then takes them as prompt, and so on.
You can play it with two people or more, although it's only really fun with three. You can do the Drabbel-Challenge for e.g. one month and then publish all written drabbles in the group.

And what is the use of Drabbels now?
Drabbles are all well and good. They (1) improve your writing style, (2) make you creative and (3) are fun. But what good are they for your novel?
Why don't you write a drabble that tells the content of your novel? This is good for plotting, but also as a first draft of your synopsis.
Or write the beginning of the next scene as a drabble. It can (4) help you if you don't feel like writing because you're only writing 100 words, a small amount, (5) help you develop a (daily?) writing routine, (6) teach you to be concise, and (7) get feedback for many snippets of your story. In addition, (8) you'll learn to write an engaging closing punch line.

4. KEEP A WRITING JOURNAL

A writing journal is a diary in which you record if, what, and how much you wrote today. It motivates you to write a number in it.

Your writing journal might be structured like this:

[date]
[What did you write about, how did it make you feel? If you can't think of anything in particular, just leave that out].
Daily goal:
Words new:
Total words:

It's up to you. You can also just keep it in a file, you don't have to get a notebook, but if you keep a BuJo anyway, this could be a good addition.