I participated in NaNoWriMo once before, in 2016 – having watched my partner get more deeply involved in previous years. I haven’t really been back, but this year with all the … yeah, I decided to give it a shot again. I’ve got my profile set up, at least the basics, and now I’m stumbling around trying to figure out what my story is going to encompass.

Last time through, I made a great start, but didn’t have much of a plan, so it fizzled out pretty hard about half-way through. So this time, I thought I’d try something a bit different and do a little planning. Last weekend, the local NaNoWriMo group hosted a session for planning and plotting, which I’d not tried previously. I’m going to try out using a beat sheet this time, to provide some constraints and structure for the overall story arc.

I grabbed a basic beat sheet from the NaNoWriMo writer’s prep resources, and since I have a copy the amazing writing app Scrivener, I decided to go ahead and make a NaNoWriMo template based on that.

If you are so inclined, you’re absolutely welcome to use it – it’s based on 50,000 words, deadline of 11/30, and the beat sheet google doc linked from the resources.