You're one month away from a finished first draft

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There's a little over 3 weeks until Nanowrimo, which means it's a great time to start thinking about your story idea and figuring out a rough outline.

Whether you're planning to follow our daily writing plan, or pants your way through (you do you), it can be really helpful to establish some story basics to act as your homing signal when you get stuck in the twists and turns of your plot later on.

Once you've established your story basics, the next important step in your Nanowrimo preparation is establishing your characters. There are three main requirements for establishing your character basics, and we'll walk you through each one.

We’re a little over one week out from the start of Nanowrimo! If you’ve been following along with our preparation guide, you should have a premise, synopsis, and a good sense of your characters and their motivations.

The next step is to create a slightly more detailed story outline.

Nanowrimo starts tomorrow! Let’s take some deep breaths, dial down the existential ‘AARRGGGH!’, and get you in the right headspace to embark on the 50,000 word writing journey ahead.

Let's start with some math, while we're all still alert. You're aiming to complete a 50 000 word novel in 30 days. According to the classic three-act story structure, Act 1 is about 25% of your story. So this means we're aiming for 12,500 words over about 8 days.

But don't worry! We've broken down the classic three-act story structure across a 50 000 word novel, and created a clear checklist of what you should be covering each day to write a compelling story and meet your wordcount goal.

In the classic three-act structure, Act 2 is a full 50% of the story. This is where you deliver on the promise of the premise. It's the part where all the fun stuff happens, and you have 25 000 words to cover it. We're breaking that up over the next two weeks.

First-up is the build up to the mid-point.

After the mid-point, your characters are feeling bright-eyed and optimistic. Next up, you're taking your characters from that high point, all the way into the depths of their misery.

The tree is on fire. The turkey is on fire. Everything is on fire.

We're nearly there! There's just one week to go. Like Act 1, Act 3 is also allocated 25% of the story in the three-act structure. These are the last 12 500 words you need to win Nanowrimo.

Act 3 is the climax or dénouement of your story. Your characters are at rock bottom when Act 3 starts, and you have to put them back together again.

You've done it, you beautiful devious word slinger. That's 50,000 magic words.

Now what?