New Year, Season 2, Mile 1: How to be accountable & who is this main character of yours?

Novel Marathon

Dear Novelists & Novelistas, 🏃Welcome to Mile 1 of Novel Marathon – The 2023 Edition! The basics: Novel Marathon is a self-directed class. Our goal is to complete a ~80k word novel in a year. There will be exercises and readings, details below. We’ll be reading three books: 👟 The One Year Novelist by L. M. Lily 👟 Story Genius by Lisa Cron 👟 This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley For extra credit, I will also occasionally refer to: 👟 Refuse To Be Done by Matt Bell Don’t worry if you don’t have all the books right away – I’ll go over the main concepts in this newsletter and on the podcast (link in bio) I’m super excited to kick off this new cycle with you. Like you, my goal is to write a novel in a year. Let’s do it together 💪 So, without further ado, here are the readings and assignments to work on for the next two weeks: 📚Required reading Ch. 1-2 in The One Year Novelist Ch. 1-4 in Story Genius Pgs. 3-13 in This Year You Write Your Novel 🌟Extra credit reading Pgs. 1-6 in Refuse To Be Done ✏️ Your Assignment 👟 Accountability Tell 3 people that you plan to finish a novel by this time next year. 👟 Protagonist Picture your main character. Think about these three questions: What’s the main thing your character wants? What makes that thing, whatever it is, hard to achieve? Why does your main character desperately want to achieve this goal? Why do you want to write about him or her? What’s motivating you to tell THIS particular story? 👟 Antagonist Shift our focus to the antagonist/antagonistic force. For maximum conflict, you want the antagonist’s goal to be directly opposed to your main character’s goal. Whatever your main character wants — the antagonist should want the opposite. 👟 Beliefs Brainstorm three over arching beliefs your main character has — does she believe that people are generally good or bad? What are your opponent’s core beliefs? 🎧 Podcast Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Newsletter 💌 and latest post https://novelmarathon.substack.com More info💡 https://www.novelmarathon.com Good luck & happy writing! ✍️