It’s been four days since NaNoWriMo 2015 got done. And I am still writing, thought I’ve won NaNoWriMo 2015. Here’s a short post on what my first NaNoWriMo experience was like.
NaNoWriMo Winner Badge! Yay!
Initially, when I started writing the novel I really did not know where I wanted to go with it. I only had a faint idea, of what the beginning scene would be like. I had no experience, whatsoever, in writing a work of fantasy fiction. Let alone a series. Once I started writing though, it started to fall into place. The reason I wanted write fantasy fiction was because I wanted to know, desperately so, that how can one person posses so much of an imagination that she is able to create worlds, cultures, and languages - within, and for her story. To find out, I set out on a fun challenge conveniently provided by NaNoWriMo - write 50 thousand words of your novel, in 30 days. And once I started, I never looked back.
The first thing that I wanted to clear out was building the magic system. That took a lot of thinking. It’s safe to state that it took more time than anything else I’ve spent time on, including writing proper. Then, everyday I set aside time - mostly early mornings, to write. Everyday, I did push myself - to write a little more than I had planned on writing. I did hit a lot of road bumps, as to not knowing what happened next in the story. That’s when I decided to write down a general outline ( a short one) of what happens within the story, and some story arcs that spanned some hundred years, or so. What this outline did was make this one novel, into a trilogy. I had reached a point here, where the entire saga started forming a picture; and I started understanding what really happens when you have a vague idea of a story.
When I started fleshing it all out, I understood the concepts of scene creation, plotting, characters, and so on - all of it learned, understood, and discovered while in the process of writing. The best part of my first NaNoWriMo experience was understanding that the characters had their own real lives; something very akin to our own. They have free will too, just like we may do too. This idea led to the characters taking a particular scene, which they were a part of, and making it their own. I played out the scenes, in my thoughts, as to what would a character do when put in particular situation. As the scenes grew, these characters started interacting with the outside world, all on their own. Thus plots, and subplots began to emerge; thus characters, themselves, began to mould their own personalities. I could really get a sense of their character growth, as the story progressed.
The very fact of me finding these characters come alive, within a scene, astounds me. It’s marvellous what your imagination is capable of - it breathes life into concepts born from perception. The best way to experience that, is by writing a novel! I think I still have about 30 thousand words to go, before I finally am done with part I of this trilogy.
All in all, NaNoWriMo this year was marvellous fun; nay, it was a brilliant adventure! More on the details of this book, soon.
