The 3-Day Novel Contest- One Writer’s Experience

Many writer participate in different writing contests and challenges, pushing themselves to complete a novel (or other works) in a set amount of time. The idea behind these is simple: motivation. As in get off your butts and just do it already.

The act of giving yourself a relatively short time frame to complete your literary work of art is a great concept. While I participated in the actual contest for the purpose of this article, these contests come and go, but that doesn’t mean that you have to wait until the next one to roll around to be able to reap the benefits of this type of motivation!

The 3-Day Novel Writing Contest was this past weekend, September 5-7. I’d heard about this particular brand of insanity before, but I had never had the guts (or the insanity?) to try it. I was always too busy, or else I remembered it far too late to come up with a decent game plan for success.

This year, I was ready.

A friend of mine had posted on my Facebook wall asking if I was thinking about doing the contest this year. At first I brushed it off, thinking, “God, is it Labor Day weekend already?” But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. My summer has gone by far too quickly, and although I’ve got a few things to show for it, I want more. I want something big. Something crazy. Something… 3-day novelish.

Thus I signed up for the challenge. Okay, technically you don’t have to sign up to participate, and in actuality, I didn’t pay the steep $50 entry fee for the potential book deal prize. I did it “for fun.” But I took it seriously, because I believe that whether or not a readable, coherent book is actually produced during this 3-day marathon, I’m in need of a challenge. And I’m in it to win it, whether or not “winning” involves a book deal.

The way I see it, a truly good book that I produce during those three days will ultimately be published, regardless of the outcome of this contest. It may take a bit more patience and dedication to get it onto an editor’s desk and through the publication process, but I’m okay with that. After all, as a friend pointed out, Faulkner’s classic The Sound and the Fury (which won the Nobel Prize in Literature) was written in a similarly short time span, though it took plenty more time for it to finally wind up in print and become recognized as a work of genius.

The game plan

I’ve completed several NaNoWriMo challenges, creating entire novels in 30 days, so I’m familiar with the idea of writing for quantity over quality. When it comes to the 3-day novel, however, I wondered how to plan for it. Sure, there’s the stocking up on caffeine and canned goods, setting the cell phone to “vibrate,” and lining up the iTunes hit-list, but how do I approach the actual writing?

According to the 3-Day Novel website’s Survival Guide, there is some debate about the importance of an outline. It states that “Most veterans of the contest will most assuredly recommend preparing an outline,” though it doesn’t say how detailed the ideal outline should be. It also notes that “the chances of sticking to the outline once things get rolling are about 1,000 to 1.” So I debated just how important a true outline should be, as I’m more the type to fly by the seat of my pants and watch scenarios unfold as I write.

I like the element of surprise. Nevertheless, I did compose a few brief notes to myself regarding the concept of my story, which is currently titled Escape From Montreal. Essentially, those notes suggest that the story be “exactly like the film, Escape From New York, except completely different.” The central concept is the same: flight from a post-apocalyptic city in the near future. The rationale and execution? Well, those are a bit of a mystery at the moment. Just the way I like it.

Plot vs. character development

Another important thing to note about the 3-day novel is the idea that either plot or character development must be thrown out the window in order to successfully pursue the completion of a novel in the space of a mere long weekend. Which will it be?

While I realize that my university creative writing instructors would be shocked and appalled, I figured I’d have to throw out character development. I love developing characters as much as the next writer, and I do truly believe that character motivates action, but let’s face it: stories without plots aren’t really stories. They’re just character sketches, and there’s no way in hell I’m writing a 100-page character sketch!

Plot has always been a tricky subject for me, as I’m often content to allow my characters to wander, to discuss from a void—in short, to behave like characters in a Hal Hartley film (see: Surviving Desire for a prime example). I like them to talk and talk, without bothering much about setting up scenes or describing their personal attributes, tics and traits. I feel the dialogue describes them far better than any simplistic listing of blonde hair and blue eyes ever could.

Still, I’ll needed some characters, and I had two lined up: A and B. A’s female, B’s male. I might give them actual names at some point, employing the name generator I’ve downloaded, but  I didn’t have time to screw around with insignificant details like that. (Remember, I threw character development out the window.) I also had a law firm in mind, after seeing a wicked commercial for seriouslawfirm.com. (I swear I’m not making that website up; it’s really real, and my husband and I had a good laugh over it.) I’m calling my fictional law firm Shyster, Schuster and Shyster. How they will figure in the plot is still anybody’s guess.

Beyond these vague sketches, I don’t really have anything particular in mind, other than moving A and B from point A (Montreal) to point B (the San Francisco Bay area). I figure it’s a journey of discovery for all of us. It’s a satire, a buddy story, a road trip saga, a modern On the Road for the postmodern condition. And whatever happens, it’ll be a work of total genius, just waiting to claw its way out of my brain. I’ll let it simmer just a bit longer, and on Saturday at midnight it’ll start to burst forth from my brain, in whatever manner best suits it at the time.

Stay tuned to see how this all turns out!