Side Writing: The Key to Finishing Your Novel While Raising Kids
It’s easy for life, children and work carry you away from your writing like a runaway horse. Pretty soon, it’s been a few days or a week since you’ve looked at your manuscript and now you’ve forgotten what scene you were writing. Here’s a solution. Copy these side-writing warm-ups into the front of a notebook. Bring the notebook everywhere you go. Instead of picking up your phone in your spare moments, do these. They help you think about your characters and your story, and plan your upcoming scenes. Then, you’ll be ready to write your novel when you get the time to sit at your desk.
- Draw a character.
2. Draw or map the next scene’s setting.
3. Journal in any character’s voice about their life.
4. Your main character tells you something you don’t know.
5. Your main character tells you what’s going to happen next.
6. Your main character gives their opinion on how you’re telling the story, what you’re doing right or wrong.
7. Your main character gives their opinion about objects/people in your life or in theirs.
8. A character goes to a therapist and empties their soul.
9. Describe how your character would do whatever you’re doing.
10.Write a conversation between two characters on a deeply held opinion, pet peeve or area of interest.
11. Write a character’s key memory at 5, 10, 15, or 20.
12. Describe how a character met another character.
13. Describe a character’s best and worst memory.
14. Describe the next setting in your draft. Include all the senses.
15. Answer these four scene questions: Who is in your next scene? What do they each want? Where are they? What will happen?
