Writing Strategies
The most important part of a novel is to write the draft. Once you have the draft you can do something with it. But without a draft all you have is ideas. So now that you have a genre and a general idea about what your novel is going to be you need to write. If you are a planner you can write down notes of the plot points but you are also welcome to pants the whole thing if you need. If you are a planner make sure to keep your plan as you will need to hand that in. For pantsers you will need to do a plot doctor task which will be handed in as part of your assignment. But for now, write.
Writing strategies
Writing can be a lonely pursuit. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you are doing this in a class you should try write-ins and writing sprints. If you are doing this by yourself then there are apps and groups on-line that you can write with. These are useful for keeping you accountable for your word counts. Share with someone your word counts or use the Nanowrimo site to keep a count. This should keep you going.
Here are some resources to help keep you writing.
There are also apps that you can use to better keep on top of your writing.
I've collected together some strategies around nanowrimo and plotting here.
Turn off your internal editor
Don’t try to make your draft perfect. We’ll get to that later. Your first draft is often messy and the like but I’ll include self-editing tips to clean it up so you can be assured that you have a half-decent book.
Resources:
Plot Doctor Task
Write out the plot points in your story. Identify the purpose of each scene. You should have at least two purposes. Is it building up the character, pushing the plot forward or is it a subplot?
You can use the MACE quotient if you need some guidance. Which plot point is your inciting incident? This is the one that pushes your character to act. If you have completed the whole story you can also look at the end and identify where all the loose ends have been tied up. You need to include this task in your planning if you are a pantser or discovery writer. For more details on this you can watch Brandon Sanderson's Lectures.
He has just updated his series so you can watch it here.