All right, it's the post NaNo Wrap Up!
I meant to post during November, but got kind of overwhelmed
trying to write the novel itself. But now it's over, so here we are.
Bottom line, I wrote 50,000 words. 50,148, to be exact. Goal
accomplished. So let's talk about it.
Plotting vs. Pantsing
For December's Problem, I went in with a particular
plan. The idea was that the general plot arc would be planned out, and the
details along the way would be randomly generated. This worked, to a degree.
The plot was this: Our main character, December, would fall into a plot hole--a portal to a parallel world--and she would go on a Sliders-style adventure through different worlds, trying to A) get home, and B) fix whatever was causing the holes. Two main things were randomly generated: the genre, and the incarnation of her friend Steve. The genre was selected from a list of 20 different genres by rolling a 20-sided die, to give me things like Horror or High Fantasy. Steve was pulled from the Big Bag of Steves (or its digital version), giving me prompts like "Steve buys some fireworks" or "Steve has fat stacks of Argentinian Pesos."