Welcome to Blog Your Book in 30 Days 2016 #BYBin30

Today is the first day of the Blog Your Book in 30 Days 2016 challenge! We have a new badge, if you'd like to use it.

First, for those of you who are new, here's a bit of information about the challenge (which you can also find by clicking on some of the links at the top of the page).

About the challenge:
Blog Your Book in 30 Days is a challenge to write the first draft of your book by posting one chapter a day for an entire month. During the month of the challenge, helpful blog posts will be shared on the website.

The challenge is here to help you write the book you have always wanted to write but have never written. Whether you want to write a memoir, a fiction novel, a comic book, a children's chapter book or middle grade novel or a non-fiction book, this challenge is going to help you get it done. 

Every day, you are going to do any research that is needed for the day's writing and your are going to post a blog post of one chapter of your book. By the end of the month, you should have 30 chapters and a completed first draft.

This way of writing your books works best if you are planning to self-publish your book, but there are some instances where blogs have garnered the attention of agents and publishers and resulted in book deals. Those instances are the exception though, not the rule.
Sign up here.

But the rules are much more flexible than they may seem by reading the "about" section, so here are the rules (which can also be found by clicking on one of the links at the top of the page).

The rules of the challenge:
Sign up. You will not be entered into the prize drawings unless you are signed up.

You have from the first of the month until the 30th of the month to complete the first draft of your book. No starting early, unless it is only research and outline you are working on beforehand.

On the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th of the month, you will do a quick comment on that day's blog post posted on this blog about that week stating how the week has gone for you and anything you have learned or achieved from the challenge that week. Your comment might be quoted in the Blog Your Book in 30 Days book when it comes out or later in the blog itself and, by commenting, you are giving permission for your quote to be used. (You will be named with the quote.)

Each day, you are to write one chapter and then copy and paste it into your day's blog post. By the end of the challenge, you should have a final word count. On the 30th, your comment will include your final word count and whether or not you have finished your first draft. Everyone who completes their first draft will be entered into a prize drawing. (The prize this year is a collection of different, mostly home-made things, and the items will be pictured on the blog as we go through the challenge, one thing at a time.) Every time you leave a comment on (one comment per post) a blog post, you will earn one more entry into the drawing. Your comments on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th will earn you two entries into the drawing, and my favorite comment from each of those five days will earn an extra entry. 

This challenge is self-driven and monitored. It is a way to keep yourself accountable as you write.

There are some optional ways of following this challenge for those who plan on having their books published traditionally rather than self-published.

1. Write your one chapter every day, but only post on your blog about the writing, such as how much you wrote, what part of the story you were working on, what was easy about it, what was difficult about it, whether it stayed on plan or strayed from the original plot idea, etc. (Have you made a book cover for your book, even just a working cover? Share that too!)

2. Write your one chapter every day, but only post a small (one paragraph) excerpt from that day's writing as your blog post for the day.

3. Blog your book as per the original plan, but leave out important chapters, which will only be seen in the finished product. (This is a good idea even for those who plan on self-publishing.)

4. Use this challenge to edit a previously written book and make notes on the blog about the editing process as you work through the different issues in your book.

The main point of this challenge is to get your book written and to build up a following for it before it comes out. 

Good luck!

Go ahead and grab a badge from below:

Day Four: Conflict #BYBin30

It might seem strange to refer to conflict for non-fiction books, but I think of it more as introducing the reason for your readers to want to learn whatever it is your book has to teach them. For example, I recently discovered a YouTube video for mermaid lovers who want to swim like mermaids. The video explained what the conflict was: Buying professionally created mermaid tails is very expensive and many people can't afford them. And it presented itself, a video on how to make your own mermaid tail inexpensively, as the solution. In a travel guide, the conflict is that you want to travel but don't know which hotels are the best or which sights there are to see in the place you want to visit. The travel guide itself is the solution to the conflict.

In non-fiction books, the conflict is implied rather than written into the book. The book itself is the solution to the conflict. If you want to learn more about Christopher Columbus, you find the solution - a biography about him. If you want to grow your own garden but don't have a lot of garden space, you might find that a book about container gardening will give you the answers you need. If you want to sell your own house, you can easily find a book on the subject which will help you learn what you need to know.

Fiction novels have a deeper dependency on conflict within the story. Without conflict in a fictional story, you won't have much of a story. Conflict is the driving force in the story. The conflict that your character faces drives his or her actions. The goal of the story is for your protagonist to overcome the conflict. There can be other conflicts in the story which help to fuel the main conflict, such as your character having an argument with the one person who holds the answer to something your protagonist needs to know or your protagonist and his or her charming secondary character/sidekick getting separated and needing to find each other again before they can, together, defeat, whatever it is that's causing the original problem.

If done correctly, the journey to overcome the conflict your protagonist faces, should, in some way, change your protagonist. He or she should grow as a result of defeating the obstacles along the way. Every decision your protagonist makes and every event that occurs as a result of those decisions should help shape your protagonists later decisions.

There are four main types of conflict in stories: man verses man - you have a protagonist and an antagonist pitted against each other, man verses self - where the biggest challenge for the protagonist is to overcome his or her own shortcomings, man verses nature - where man must overcome the forces of nature or creatures within nature to survive, and man verses society - where man must overcome the restrictions of society in order to succeed. These can sometimes overlap in stories. Others have suggested that there are more types of conflict for modern stories, such as man verses fate, man verses the supernatural and man verses technology, but, again, many of these types of conflict will overlap within stories.

If you are writing a non-fiction book, ask yourself; what is the implied conflict for which my book is the solution?

If you are writing a fiction novel, ask yourself these questions:

What does my protagonist want?

What obstacles or problems is my protagonist facing?

How will my protagonist need to change, or what will he or she need to do differently, in order to overcome the obstacles or problems being faced?