Preptober planner, 2024

August is now upon us. This is a liminal month here in Western PA, probably in other places. Signs of fall have started to pop up. Some leaves are beginning to turn, but most are still a vibrant green. The Steelers preseason is starting soon. Kids are going back to school. And while the days are still stifling hot, the nights are getting cooler. The days grow short, the nights grow long and my soul is coming alive.

Pumpkin spice is coming, my friends. Pumpkin spice is coming.

And while we’re all either soaking up the last weeks of summer or counting the days until chunky sweater weather, one thing remains the same. Nanowrimo will be with us before you realize it. And it’s time to get ready for Preptober. As such, I have updated my preptober planner for 2024.

This year’s version sports a new, darker color and updated coffee cups throughout the whole thing. More substantially, it includes two new planning pages.

Our first new page is a character injury page. I think we’ve all read or seen something in which a character is injured in one scene, only to be perfectly fine far too soon after. Was this done for convenience? Or did the author just forget about the injury?

The new planner page will help you avoid this. This includes a male and female presenting outline so that you can keep track of the bumps, bruises and breaks that your character suffers along the way.

Our second new page is a map page. I am a visual person. And it might surprise you to know that I often draw maps of my story locations so that I can keep track of things. Especially stories like Station 86, which included several levels of the space station that I needed to keep track of. I also had a map of the apartment building in Quiet Apocalypse so that I could remember who lived where and across from who.

These two pages bring us up to eleven total pages of planning goodness. You can print the planner out or just download it and write directly on the document. And while you could follow along with everyone planning on October, there is no reason you can’t get the planner now and begin your novel writing adventure.

I love this planner so much. Every year it gets better, in my humble opinion. You can get it right here now on Ko-fi for only $1.50.

Happy planning and happy writing everyone!