💥 13 Rebel ideas for Novelember

In the writing community, many of us take part in a month-long writing marathon of writing a 50,000 word novel during November.

Since the collapse and abandonment of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), lots of other communities have opened up their doors to continue the tradition and host the challenge.

📚 So, what is Novelember?

Novelember is simply "Novel-November". It's exactly the same concept: during November you write a 50k words towards a novel (or other big writing project)! It doesn't have to be finished, edited, or perfect - you can polish it up later.

You can write in any format you prefer, whether it's Google Docs, Scrivener, Obsidian, something else, or good ol' pen and paper.

World Anvil is hosting this event, and have really relaxed rules with an honour system to submit your wordcount and get a digital certificate for completion.

NovelEmber 2024

Worldbuilding and RPG Campaign Management tools for all Storytellers, Dungeon Masters and fiction Authors

World AnvilWorld Anvil

✊ What does being a rebel mean?

Not everyone enjoys writing novels, and when I tried the event in previous years I quickly learnt that it was not my cup of tea! 😅 (Also I'd never written a story before so I found it really hard!)

Thankfully, you can still take part as a rebel. Just write 50k words of whatever you like during November! Here are some ideas I've put together that you could try out this year:

💥 13 rebel ideas for Novelember:

1. Short stories instead of one big one
2. Non-fiction writing (such as a book, essays, or a research paper)
3. Just the planning bit for a novel
4. Editing and polishing up previous things you've written
5. Writing for a comic or graphic novel
6. Poetry, letters, or memoirs
7. Coding
8. Blogging
9. Script writing (for videos, TV, film, or theatre)
10. Course writing
11. Translation
12. Game design (planning, dialogue, TTRPG design, statblocks)
13. Worldbuilding (though there is a fun challenge in December for this!)

🧰 Useful tools for Novelember:

I made a wordcount tracker and planner in Google Sheets that's perfect for staying on track during marathon writing challenges like Novelember!

You can calculate your average writing speed, make time for days off, record your daily progress, and it will tell you how many words you need to write each day to reach your goal.

You can grab your copy here:

TJ’s Worldbuilding Planner

What you’ll get:An interactive Google Sheet containing: 📈 A goal planner with a wordcount and progress tracker🌍 A place to plan out what you want to create⚡ Somewhere to keep track of your favourite prompts and challenges📜 A bonus quest board that will help you decide what to do next! Features: Suitable for worldbuilding and creative writing challenges! You can use this tool for helping keep track of your worldbuilding ideas, plan out your next milestone and big goals, or even track your daily writing progress!It even has a place to keep track of all of those prompts and challenges that you want to take part in or get around to finishing! (Seriously, how many ARE there in October now?)If you’re stuck for ideas, check the quest board! It will pick a random top priority item from your list, or maybe an unfinished prompt, or maybe just a small thing you can achieve! It has some great self care ideas as rewards for completing them, too. 💜Reach your goals as you track your progressNail that NaNoWriMo, smash that Summer Camp, and win at WorldEmber by keeping a steady pace and avoiding burnout. Complete three short writing sprints and the tool will calculate your average writing speed - it will use this to show you how long your next target will take each day so you can find some time in your schedule to achieve your ultimate goal!Furthermore, if you know you’ll have some busy days during your challenge - it will take that into account and increase your daily target accordingly so that you finish on time!Fully customizableEvery part of the sheet is customizable! You can customise all of the lists used in the dropdown menus, and add your own motivational quotes and self care rewards to keep you motivated throughout your challenges. As always, if something doesn’t suit you - change it or remove it! Only use what’s useful to you :)The drop down menus in the planner are based off of the ready-to-use templates on World Anvil, but you are free to customise it and use the worldbuilding tools that suit you best!LicenceThis work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Gumroad

Are you taking part in the event this year? If so what will you be writing?