NaNoWriMo: Day 4

I'm still hanging in here, writing the middle 50k words for my new novel. As of last night I had about 6k finished, which means I was only about 667 words behind. Today that number is 2334. I think I'll get more done, and here's why:

Individual scenes vary greatly in writing difficulty

The scenes I was working on for days 1-3? A dinner party. I don't know about you, but those things can get dull very quickly. But, you can't just spice things up for the sake of reader interest. I could have had a meteor fall on the street below, but that would completely violate my the rules of my story's universe. So, how do I make a dinner party work without boring the reader into quitting?

1) Focus on what you need to accomplish. In my case, there was a lot of character development and relationship building to hash out quickly.
2) Skip dialogue. People talk a lot at dinner parties, some of that isn't entirely relevant to the reader even if the gist of it is. Write that it happened, but leave out the words of the actual conversation. Make sure to include a good proportion of dialogue too, but just the best parts.
3) Edit it down considerably when revision time comes. By then, the whole story will be written and the absolute most important elements will be clearer.

Writing boring scenes without boring the reader is essential. Most people judge a book not by its cover, but by the first pages. But the first pages are, with few exceptions, the most boring part of a book! While these scenes are essential to a good story, you have to be very careful not to lose reader interest. Naturally, writing these scenes is hard.

Today, tomorrow and Friday's scenes? Oh, a murder attempt! Exciting to write, exciting to read... EASY. But the impact would be lost without the preceding character development.

I suppose I could just put murder attempts, meteors and explosions in every other scene. That would make me the Michael Bay of novels.

But I don't want to be the Michael Bay of novels...


Side note:

For all the harassment people give Michael Bay for his ridiculous plots and tissue-thin character development, the guy is an action/explosion savant. Though it's not everyone's thing, the guy knows his audience and he gives them the best version of what they want. I recently watched and hated his version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I watch movies at the gym), and though I was utterly disappointed, I did find reason to appreciate his work. If you can, go watch the scene where the turtles are sliding down a mountain with a big rig truck, fighting humvees with retractable shocking harpoons and answer this: what kind of mind can come up with this stuff? It's hardly cerebral to watch, but I dare anyone to say Michael Bay doesn't possess a twisted bit of genius to come up with it.