30-Day Writing Challenge (for novelists)
this challenge is intended for novel writers who have had a strong novel idea for a while and know their story fairly well, or who have already made a little progress on a novel, and are stuck on it. i’m not an expert so i don’t know how much this is actually going to help you get out of that rut, but the hope is that you’ll spend a month immersing yourself in the world of your story and you’ll get some motivation out of it. i’d suggest taking about 30 minutes (at least) to do each activity, and to do everything completely distraction-free, with your phone in another room and your computer on do not disturb (if you’re writing on a computer). enjoy you nerds.
1. Write out your entire plot, even if you’ve already done it. This will re-familiarize you with your project.
2. Get the basic information on your main character. Write their backstory up until the point where your novel begins, make note of characteristics, and get their basic appearance down. Got multiple main characters? Great! You get to write more. (That’s what you get.) For all characters, make sure you know:
your character’s wants
your character’s values
at least five character flaws
the role your character will play in the story
how you want them to change over the course of the story
optional but recommended: cultural aspects like race or religion, which will help you develop their background and values a lot better.
3. Do some basic worldbuilding: what year is this novel set? Country? Planet? What are some traditions or norms? Is there magic or new technology? What’s up with the government? If your novel is set in our current world, work out the specifics of the characters’ neighborhood, home, city, etc.
4. Without allowing yourself to see any previous versions that may exist, write the opening scene.
5. Do what you did on day 2, except for your antagonist. No clear-cut antagonist? Pick whoever’s closest, or do the prompts for a supporting or minor character.
6. Research day: go through what you’ve already written and highlight everything you wanted to look up later, then spend some time researching it. You’ll probably find out more things that you’ll want to add to the plot.
7. Character day: you’ll have four of these, so divide up your characters accordingly. Do some of the character work you did for your main and antagonist for however many . You can go into less detail if they’re less important, but make sure you still know the six main points that you got to know about the more featured characters.
8. Pick a few parts of your worldbuilding exercise that you want to go more in-depth into (i.e. political systems, technology, cultural traditions) and spend about thirty minutes writing, brainstorming, and researching things to flesh them out. There will be three worldbuilding days, so make sure to save some material for the others!
9. Look through the plot you wrote out and see if you can find any plotholes, concepts you want to flesh out more, or parts that are unclear or missing. Really take some time to understand what the problems are, and come up with some possible solutions. It’s great if you figure out what you want to do, but if you don’t, that’s fine! You still made progress.
10. Without allowing yourself to see any previous versions that may exist, write the ending scene. Spoiler alert: this is going to be really hard. You can try writing a couple contenders, or even outlining a scene if you’re not quite sure where to go. Don’t worry about trying to make it pretty, because it’s not gonna be pretty: you don’t have all the details that you would if you were writing in chronological order.
11. Character day
12. Write your favorite scene. If you have a strong story idea in your head, you most likely know the one: you daydream about it when you wish you were doing something else, it plays like a movie in your head, it’s probably located somewhere around the middle of the book, and you probably haven’t let yourself write it because you “haven’t gotten there yet”. Today’s the day. Go nuts.
13. Rewrite the opening scene from a different character’s perspective. I know this sounds really cliche, but even if it doesn’t give you more insight on the story, it’s fun to do.
14. Worldbuilding day
15. Research day: research new stuff that you hadn’t written last time, plus anything over from the first research day. Not sure what to research? Characters’ cultures, the history of your setting (if in our world), famous fictional worlds, language development… if you sit and think for a little, you’ll figure out something you want to know.
16. Pick a few of your favorite character relationships: romantic, platonic, familial, whatever you want, and spend some time sketching them out. Think about their arcs, how they met (if they’re not related), what they think about each other, how they interact… basically anything you want, as long as you come away knowing more about the relationships between your characters. Also, please make only half (or less) of these romantic! It’s super important to develop the other relationships in the story.
17. Pick up from where you left off in your opening scene and write the next scene. Again, don’t look at any previously existing drafts.
18. Character day
19. Emotion break! Make a list of everything you don’t like about your book. Get all your insecurities out onto the paper, then refute everything you don’t like. If it’s specifics like “I don’t like that x happens”, figure out how to make x not happen. If it’s general doubts like “This has been done before and I’m unoriginal,” refute that too! Everyone doubts their work all the time and I can guarantee that we are all more critical of our own work than others will be. Finish today’s unconventional activity off by writing a list of everything you love about your book.
20. Pick any scene you’ve written for this book, whether it be from this challenge or something you had before, and rewrite it in some form of AU. Change the genre, time period, location, context… you are a god.
21. Worldbuilding day
22. You know those books that are stories told entirely in poems? You heard me. (Start anywhere you want to, write at least five or however many you can get done in 30 minutes. No one will ever read them, so don’t complain that you’re not a poet.)
23. Find a list of dialogue prompts and pick a few to do with your characters. Want a challenge? Choose two characters at random. (I mean using a generator or drawing names out of a hat. COMPLETELY random.)
24. Pick up from day 16 and write the next scene.
25. Last character day :(
26. Write, or at least, begin, a very short story in your world. Try to include no characters from your actual story. If your novel takes place in our world, focus in on the characters’ neighborhood, time period, workplace, school, etc. This exercise will help you get to know your world through a different perspective. Don’t stress too much about this! It doesn’t have to be very long or even to be finished.
27. Fun day! Pick three of these activities to do with your novel:
Make a playlist about the novel as a whole, or make some character playlists
Design the cover
Cast actors in the film/TV version
Draw: character portraits, scenes, maps, landscapes…
Put together a moodboard for the novel or a character
Write that completely unrealistic scene you love so much but can’t put in the novel for plot reasons
Make memes about your characters
Sit and daydream for a solid 10 minutes about the Vibe of the novel
Anything that falls into a similar category
This is a callout activity for all you ””””””””writers”””””””” who spend more time daydreaming about novel ideas than actually writing. (this is 100% a joke because this is 100% me)
28. Rewrite your opening scene from a different narrator. If you wrote in first person, use third. If you wrote in third, use first. You can also mess with second person if you feel like you have an artist superiority complex and aren’t like other girls.
29. Pick your favorite activity from so far and do it again.
30. List everything that you need to do before you can jump right into the first draft. Then do it.
