Today marks the start of Preptober for Dual Wielding: Featherstorm!
Timeline:
Week 1, 1st—5th April: Planning Week
Week 2, 6th—12th April: Power Week for Structure
Week 3, 13th—19th April: Power Week for Characters
Week 4, 20th—26th April: Power Week for Plot
Week 5, 27th—30th April: Power Week for Research
I’m using the basic Preptober guide that I made and mentioned in Editary Summary for Rini & Butler. I enjoy making “worksheets” and personalising them because I’ve finally learned how I operate but the inspiration for this comes directly from Heart Breathings’ Sarra Cannon’s Rough Draft Challenge Workbook.
Week 1: Planning Week
The point of planning week is to really narrow down the game plan for the other weeks. It’s greasing the wheels before we really get started; get the water wheel turning. It gives me points to springboard off of during the following weeks.
Week 2: Structure Week
The reason I have a week for structure is because it provides the skeleton for me to start filling. I have a bad habit of running away with stories and then realising the structure is so out of whack that it takes an entire overhaul to fix. The hope is that this week will make it easier for me to write and clean up projects. It also helps set goals for writing as I get a better idea of how long I want sections to be or which beats I need to hit.
Monday: storming the overall structure
Tuesday & Wednesday: Arc 1
Thursday & Friday: Arc 2
Saturday & Sunday: Arc 3
Week 3: Character Week
Character week is all about building great foundations for the central characters and really thinking on their involvement in the story so that I can write the story around them rather than cram them into the story. There will always be characters that come up spontaneously while I write but having a focus week on characters makes me have to look at them as separate to the novel and so I can get a better idea of the quantity and quality.
Monday: character storm
Tuesday: Foruna & Isabel
Wednesday: the Grady Family
Thursday: the Hadir Family
Friday: Lancelot & Arthur
Saturday & Sunday: central secondary characters
Week 4: Plot Week
Plot week is about filling around the structure. I start expanding on the outlines and focusing on character movement throughout the story.
I typically write out dot point outlines to connect all of the main points laid out during the structure week.
Monday: main story threads
Tuesday & Wednesday: Arc 1
Thursday & Friday: Arc 2
Saturday & Sunday: Arc 3
Week 5: Research Week
Research week is about getting a headstart on information that will be relevant to the realism of the novel. Research sessions for me often result in my learning about three other things adjacently related to what I was supposed to be studying about. I try to narrow the topics down to what I feel are important to learn about.
Thursday: Preptober ends!
Friday: Writvember begins!
I will post occasional updates throughout the month as I work on getting ready for Writvember. Like with Rini & Butler, Dual Wielding: Featherstorm will likely be a bit easier than completely starting from scratch, but it will still help me build a better approach to getting those drafts properly finished. I don’t think that I’ll ever do a writing block with something from scratch, just from less established projects. I have an incredible amount of backlogged projects. We’ll see where the writing takes us! ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾
Hopfield is Writing 
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