A Challenge

I've been thinking about the NaNoWriMo thingy.

Not something I could do as I live in the Southern Hemisphere and November just doesn't fit as downtime.

So I challenged a couple of friends of mine to do it with me in February. Not smart - it's the shortest month of the year!

But we all agreed to do something to push up our output. Some have been more successful than others and are managing some pretty good word counts.

Not so me. Life has seriously gotten in the way of my ambitions, however, I have managed 500 words a day.

The extra little twist I've challenged myself with though, is to finish each daily little 500 word output on a cliffhanger a la Days of Our Lives.

The cliffhanger can be good or bad but has to be at a higher level of tension than when the piece first started. So over 1500 words you should get the ooh, aah, ooh, aah, ooh thing happening with your readers.

1. 1st 500 - build to an ooh,
2. 2nd 500 - resolve [aah] and then build to another [higher] ooh,
3. 3rd 500 - resolve [aah] and then build to another ooh.

See how it works? Try it yourself. If you're stuck with any of your writing just put your characters into an unfamiliar situation and see what happens by constantly challenging them for 1500 - 2000 words.

Jennifer