BIAM Day One

Today is March 1st. You are all thinking, yeah...so what?

Today is the day I am starting my BIAM (Book in a Month) project as stated in the book Book In A Month Fool Proof System For Writing A Novel In 30 Days by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. No, I don't actually plan on completing a whole book in only 30 days! My only goal here is to write every day. That in itself has been a challenge for me and I really hope these exercises will give me the motivation I need to keep going.

Today is day one, and the exercises for today were pretty simple.

The first on was to create a one-sentence summary as a reference point when outlining my book. Here is what I came up for my first novel.

"A young native woman must learn to control her unique gift as she tries to discover her place in the world."

I am pretty happy with this sentence. I think it brings everything I am trying to do together nicely without going overboard on all the details.

The second exercise for the day involved creating a Story Idea Map worksheet. This involves mapping out things like the main story idea, hook, turning point, characters, setting etc. Obviously I am not going to share every step along the way with you (there has to be some surprise to the readers when this book is completed) but I will try to share enough to keep everyone's interest peaked!

So what can I share with you from my Story Idea Map worksheet? Not much without giving everything away, but how about a few character names to tide you over?

Main Characters
Opal
Jayde
Onyx

Support Characters
Emerald
Orenda
Jasper
Anne
Ruby

I have my talented young sister working on some sketches and hope to be able to share a few of them soon.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask at any time.

I'm still trying to figure out if I need a novel writing software other than Word, but right now I am doing most or my note on worksheets so I have some time to do more research and figure it out.

Anyone out there have any good tips on writing software and writing books they like to use?