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8.18.2012

How to Write a Novel (In Three Days) Part One: What?


As promised, my trying-to-be-professional-and-helpful blog post series!

For the first installment in my series, I feel like I need to explain what 3-Day is. The 3-Day Novel Contest is a writing event that happens every year on labor day weekend. Hundreds of crazed novelists enter and write like mad for three days to churn out a novel. This novel is then submitted and judged.

Of course, I’m not here to insist that you pay the fee to enter officially, though I do think it helps with motivation. It can be just as fun to write a novel for yourself and not submit it anywhere. In fact, feel free to write a novel in three days on some other weekend. (There was this guy? With this blog? And he wrote, like, twenty-four three day novels in a year.)

The point is, writing novel in three days is awesome.

MIND, I’m using the word ‘novel’ loosely. Most three day novels come in around one hundred pages, which is really more of a novella. But three day novella doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Anyway, this is really more of an extremely rough first draft. Don’t try to publish this novel the day after you finish. Please.

Anyway, 72 hours. Write a story from beginning to ending. Sound good? No? Tomorrow I’m going to tell you why you should consider it.

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