Welcome to NOVEL MARATHON, a 26-episode podcast aimed at helping you write the first draft of an 80,000 word novel in about a year. We’re reading THE ONE YEAR NOVELIST by L. M. Lilly, STORY GENIUS by Lisa Cron and THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL by Walter Mosley. To join, simply listen, do the readings and complete the exercises in the assigned chapters listed in the show notes. You can expect a new episode about every two weeks. I hope you’ll join us. Good luck with your novel-in-progress!
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Welcome to NOVEL MARATHON, a 26-episode podcast aimed at helping you write the first draft of an 80,000 word novel in about a year. We’re reading THE ONE YEAR NOVELIST by L. M. Lilly, STORY GENIUS by Lisa Cron and THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL by Walter Mosley. To join, simply listen, do the readings and complete the exercises in the assigned chapters listed in the show notes. You can expect a new episode about every two weeks. I hope you’ll join us. Good luck with your novel-in-progress!
Mile 4: Three-quarter turn, accountability check-in ✅ and a little AI-powered 🤖 handwriting magic ✍️
Novel Marathon
3 minutes 48 seconds
2 years ago
Mile 4: Three-quarter turn, accountability check-in ✅ and a little AI-powered 🤖 handwriting magic ✍️
Dear Novelists & Novelistas,
🏃Welcome to Mile 4 of Novel Marathon – The 2023 Edition!
Hope you’re staying warm, wherever you are! This past week it snowed in the northeastern part of LA, where I live – not a regular occurrence! Of course the snow didn’t stay, but it’s still nice to drive my kid to school in the morning and see snow-dusted hills in the distance…
This week, we’ll continue to sketch out the plot of our novel, check-in on progress, plus I’ll share a little word count hack for those of you who like to handwrite your initial draft ✍️
Here’s the last batch of assignments we worked on: https://novelmarathon.substack.com/p/novel-marathon-mile-3
Here are the readings and assignments to work on for the NEXT two weeks:
📚Required reading
Ch. 7 & 8 in The One Year Novelist
Ch. 8 in Story Genius
🌟Extra credit reading
Pgs. 16-18 in Refuse To Be Done
✏️ Your Assignment
👟Three-quarter turn
After the midpoint of your novel, when your MC doubles down and commits to a cause or fight, what might happen that sends your story in a new direction? Brainstorm five possibilities. And what happens at the end? Is your MC going to “win,” whatever that means in your book?
👟Collect generative epigraphs
See a passage in a book that could be an epigraph for the one you’re writing? Following Matt Bell’s suggestions, start collecting these passages in a file – or, even better, paste them after the title page directly into your working draft. If you keep doing this, you will have way more potential quotes than what you’re going to need. In the meantime, let other people’s writing inspire you while you’re trying to figure out what kind of book YOU are writing.
👟 Accountability check-in
It’s time to check in with your group of three friends who will keep you honest. Let them know how it’s going. If you’re behind, no need to make excuses, just focus on what you’re going to do in order to get back on track — for example, you could go back to an earlier episode and pick up where you left off. Remember, long distance races are run and won on your own time!
Previous assignments can be found at novelmarathon.substack.com
👀 Watch & 🎧Listen
Follow Novel Marathon on YouTube or TikTok. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Newsletter 💌 and latest post: https://novelmarathon.substack.com
More info💡: https://www.novelmarathon.com
Good luck & happy writing! ✍️
Novel Marathon
Welcome to NOVEL MARATHON, a 26-episode podcast aimed at helping you write the first draft of an 80,000 word novel in about a year. We’re reading THE ONE YEAR NOVELIST by L. M. Lilly, STORY GENIUS by Lisa Cron and THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL by Walter Mosley. To join, simply listen, do the readings and complete the exercises in the assigned chapters listed in the show notes. You can expect a new episode about every two weeks. I hope you’ll join us. Good luck with your novel-in-progress!
