Time to Register for NaNoWriMo!

For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.

It is a challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in a month, and it comes around every November.

From humble beginnings in 1999, when there were just 21 participants, NaNoWriMo has grown into a world-wide phenomenon. Last year 101,510 people took part, and the numbers this year are expected to be even greater as the event becomes better known.

There is no entry fee for NaNoWriMo (though donations are welcome), and no prizes either. Essentially, it is a challenge to help you write that novel you had always meant to write but keep putting off. By registering with NaNoWriMo, you are joining a world-wide community of writers who are all seeking to achieve the same end, and are thus able to encourage and support one another.

This year quite a few members of my forum at www.mywriterscircle.com have registered for NaNoWriMo 2008. If you are looking for some 'buddies' to share notes and compare progress with, check out this forum topic.

Although there are no prizes for completing a novel for NaNoWriMo, if you do (and you have to prove it by uploading your work to the NaNoWriMo site), you will be able to download an official 'Winner' web badge and a PDF Winner's Certificate, which you can print out. And, of course, you will have the first draft at least of a novel you should be able to polish and submit for possible publication.

NaNoWriMo is, by the way, a great opportunity to apply the techniques taught in WCCL's new Novel in a Month course, or indeed my own Write Any Book in Under 28 Days.

I'd like to wish you the very best of luck if you do decide to register for NaNoWriMo. Please let me know if you succeed in completing the challenge!

Amazon Vine Review: The Painted Man

I recently read and reviewed my latest book from the Amazon Vine programme. I thought perhaps you might be interested to see it.

The book in question is The Painted Man, by Peter V. Brett. It's the first book in a planned trilogy of fantasy novels. With certain minor reservations I found it an enjoyable read. Here's a (slightly edited) version of my review.

The Painted Man is the first book of Peter V. Brett's Demon Trilogy.

It follows the lives of three young people growing up in a world where demons are very much real rather than fantasy figures. They rise from the world's core at nightfall to attack human beings, who can only protect themselves by hiding behind 'wards' - magical sigils the demons cannot (usually) pass.

The three main characters are Arlen, a talented warder (drawer of wards), Leesha, a healer, and Rojer, a jongleur (travelling minstrel). All three feel destiny pulling at them to finally rid their world of the demon plague.

Peter V. Brett has crafted a compelling fantasy novel with some original ideas, generally sympathetic characters, and an absorbing, fast-paced plot.

The Painted Man is decently written in a plain, unadorned style, though it is never going to win any literary awards. Brett's prose lacks the depth and lyrical qualities of, say, a Robin Hobb or a Robert Silverberg, two distinguished current fantasy world-weavers. There were also a few places where I felt the plotting creaked a bit, notably in the strand concerning Leesha.

Nonetheless, this is a promising debut by a new fantasy author. Anyone who enjoys reading an exciting adventure novel, without expecting it to be a literary masterpiece, is unlikely to be disappointed. I'll certainly be looking out for the second volume.

Here's a permalink to my review on Amazon.co.uk, in case you'd like to read it in situ. As ever, if you like the review, a 'Helpful' vote is always appreciated!

Finally, I've included image links to the book's sales pages at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com at the foot of this post. Note that, while The Painted Man is available from Amazon.co.uk now, the US version won't be available till March 2009 (and for some reason it will be called The Warded Man in the US). Note also that if you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see the image links.

Review: Novel in a Month

Novel in a Month is the latest in WCCL's range of products and courses for writers, which also includes my courses Write Any Book in Under 28 Days and Quick Cash Writing.

Novel in a Month is written by Dan Strauss, Senior Editor of the WCCL Network and a successful author/novelist himself.

The course is provided on CD-ROM in the universal PDF format. It is therefore suitable for all computing platforms: Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

Like all WCCL products, Novel in a Month is beautifully produced, and it has clearly been professionally written and edited. The main manual (I'll get to the bonuses later) takes you step by step through everything you need to know to write a novel in the shortest possible time. Not surprisingly, I guess, the method set out in Novel in a Month bears a close resemblance to the one I set out in Write Any Book in Under 28 Days (though, of course, the latter is aimed primarily at people who want to write a non-fiction book).

I don't suppose I'm giving away too much if I reveal that the system described in Novel in a Month involves writing your first draft in three weeks, then editing it in the fourth. There is also a preliminary stage of planning and outlining, which takes up the first day or two.

Novel in a Month is packed with hints, tips and guidelines for novelists. Among the things I particularly liked were the 'population index' chart for developing characters, and Dan's P.L.O.T. plotting method, neither of which I had seen before.

Indeed, I thought Novel in a Month was particularly strong on plot and plotting methods. As well as the P.L.O.T. system, the course includes five top tips for plotting your novel, six universal plot archetypes, and so forth. My only slight reservation concerns the index card system that Dan advocates as an aid to plotting. Don't get me wrong, it's a great system, but personally I'd much prefer to work on my PC rather than start fiddling about with bits of cardboard. Still, it wouldn't be hard to adapt Dan's system to something a little more 21st century.

Other areas discussed in depth include dialogue, characterization, pacing, editing, viewpoint, writing in scenes ('show, don't tell'), and descriptive writing. Dan (correctly) emphasizes the importance of economy of style and resisting the temptation to overwrite. I can't help thinking, however, that he might have chosen a better example of this art than the late US science fiction author Isaac Asimov, entertaining though some of his short stories undoubtedly are (have you tried reading any of his 'Foundation' novels, though?). Perhaps I'm being a bit picky, however!

In addition to the main guide, you get five additional bonus items. These are as follows:

1. Getting Dialogue Down - a mini-guide to writing convincing (and correctly punctuated) dialogue.

2. How to Get Free Publicity for Your Novel - a 15-page guide showing how to get your book promoted on a shoe-string budget.

3. How to Get Celebrity Endorsements for Your Novel - if you've bought my Write Any Book in Under 28 Days course you'll know this already - but if not, the advice in this report will tell you exactly how to put this powerful technique to good use.

4. The Hottest Agents in the US and UK - this bonus guide contains over 40 pages of agent contact details, e-mail addresses, websites, guidelines, requirements, and so on.

5. 33 Techniques for Fine-Tuning Your Fiction - personally I think this is the most important and valuable of the bonuses. It shows you how to fine-tune your novel so that it stands out from the competition. Applying these 'advanced' techniques could make all the difference between having your book rejected and getting it accepted for publication.

Overall, Novel in a Month gets my recommendation as the most comprehensive course I have seen on writing a novel in the shortest possible time. If you are thinking of joining in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November, it could be the ideal guide to have at your side and on your PC. But even if you don't intend to try writing a complete novel in a month, it would still be a very useful guide to plotting and writing your first best-seller!

Coming Soon on WritersFM

Two of the biggest-name writers yet are about to be interviewed on WritersFM - and YOU can help choose the questions they are asked!

First up is Syd Field, an American writer who has become one of the most popular screenwriting gurus in the movie industry. Syd has written several books on the art of screenwriting (see, for example, the link below), and holds workshops that help aspiring screenwriters to produce the kinds of screenplays that will sell in Hollywood. Syd's ideas about what makes a good script have become highly influential on Hollywood producers, who have increasingly used his ideas on structure as a guide to a proposed screenplay's potential.




If your interests include screenwriting, you MUST listen out for this interview. And if you have any suggestions for questions that WritersFM host Karl Moore should put to Syd, you can raise them via this topic on my forum.

The other forthcoming interviewee is Bernard Cornwell, the prolific and popular British historical novelist. Bernard's best known books feature the adventures of Richard Sharpe, an English soldier, and are set in the Napoleonic era. Many of the books were filmed for a television series starring Sean Bean as Sharpe, produced by Central Independent Television for the ITV network. Other series written by Bernard Cornwell include 'The Starbuck Chronicles', set during the American Civil War, and his latest series 'The Saxon Stories', set in 9th century England.

This interview should be essential listening for any aspiring novelists, and historical novelists in particular. Again, if there are any questions you would like Karl to put to Bernard, you can suggest them via this topic on my forum.

Finally, just a reminder that you can listen online to the most recent WritersFM interviews (including my own!) via the new LivePlay feature on the WritersFM Podcasts page. You can also download podcasts of all past interviews from this page.

A Million Penguins

...That's the title of an experiment in collaborative novel-writing currently taking place at www.amillionpenguins.com.

A Million Penguins is a joint project of the publishing house Penguin and DeMontfort University, Leicester, England.

So far the project has been running for around three weeks. From the initial sentence "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day", a substantial, if somewhat incoherent, novel is now taking shape.

Anyone interested in joining in is welcome to go along to the Million Penguins website and open an account (which is free, of course). A Million Penguins uses the wiki format that powers the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Anyone who has ever written or edited entries on Wikipedia should find the interface familiar, therefore.

Even if you're not interested in contributing, it's well worth taking a look at the project to see how it evolves. My view is that there is some good writing in there, along with a lot of poorly written nonsense. The novel has also been hijacked to some extent by one contributor who seems obsessed about bananas, and a live topic on the Million Penguins Blog is whether or not they should be banned. The novel is also lacking any overall theme or direction, though there are some promising stories embedded in it. Maybe wiki-novels are not the future of publishing, but I could see smaller wikis with membership by invitation only as an interesting possibility for future collaborations.

Anyway, do visit A Million Penguins and see what it's all about for yourself!