October Novel Prep Challenge

Plenty of Preppers adapt the assignments to their projects. How many protagonists do you have? You have a minor character assignment you could use, but if you need more main characters, profile all of them on protagonist day. The assignments require a MINIMUM of fifteen minutes, but you're welcome to spend more. If that's not doable, use your freestyle days to develop more characters. And worst case scenario, if you don't Prep all your main characters, at least you'll have a few of them developed. You can concentrate on their stories during November and add more later.

Prep will still be useful to you, even if you don't get all your characters fleshed out. After all, the type of work you're doing is thematic. It has a consistency in its world, its rules, and the message you're trying to tell. I, Robot consists of a series of short stories, true, and all featuring different protagonists, but the Rules of Robotics are the same; humanity is equally capable of advanced space travel in each of the stories; all the stories feature robots; all the stories connect to one central characters, Dr. Susan Calvin, even if they don't all feature her specifically; and perhaps most importantly, they all serve to share one overriding message: that humans shouldn't try to play God.

During October, with a project like yours, you'll have plenty of story details to work out. This isn't a series of unconnected short stories you're writing; it's a series of smaller tales that, together, tell a bigger story. You'll pin down your theme. The most important characters will emerge. Just because you don't have time to Prep every single character doesn't mean your project disqualifies you from the challenge.

Cheers,
Michelle