Here are your informal writerly learnings for the week 🙂

First, your preptober fix of NaNo:

Janice Hardy continues her 31 day NaNoWriMo prepcourse on Fiction University. Day eight: developing the character arcs. Day nine: choosing your point of view. Day ten: choosing your POV characters. Day eleven: finding your theme. Day twelve: choosing your setting. Day thirteen: determining your goals. Day Fourteen: discovering your external conflicts.

Arthur Klepkuchov shares his first (and last?) winning NaNoWriMo. Writer Unboxed

Rachael Stephen: creating a powerful character backstory.

 

Grant Faulkner on Writer’s Digest: how one month of NaNoWriMo can lead to a lifetime of better writing.

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K.M. Weiland: four reasons you’re confused about scene structure.  Later in the week, Kate explains why we need more thematically pertinent female protagonists. Helping Writers Become Authors

Roz Morris helps you figure out what should go into your story’s ending. Writers Helping Writers

Sacha Black helps you improve your sentences: getting jiggy with the nitty gritty. Writers Helping Writers

Angela Ackerman guest posts on Writers in the Storm: does your villain have well-developed motivations?

Emily Wenstrom answers the question: should writers be on LinkedIn? DIY MFA

Bess Cozby shows you how to build rest and retreats into your writing routine. DIY MFA

Sarah Callender shares her experience with a bun in the oven: the gestation period of a novel. Writer Unboxed

Writing what you (never hope to) know: empathy, perception, projection. Kathryn Magendie on Writer Unboxed.

Orly Konig Lopez explains why every writer needs writer’s events. Writers in the Storm

Jami Gold: genre is worldbuilding. And, later in the week, Jami asks, how do you define success?

Alex Acks is perplexed by the river systems of Middle Earth. Tor.com

Alison Flood reports on Vita Sackville-West’s miniature book, said to have inspired Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The Guardian

Sophie Elmhirst celebrates Philip Pullman’s return to his fantasy world. The New York Times Magazine

Nell Irvin Painter: Toni Morrison’s radical vision of otherness. New Republic

Alexandra Alter profiles Nnedi Okorafor for The New York Times.

Laura Bradley: the strange history of “nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” Vanity Fair

Be well until Thursday, my writerly friends 🙂