I’m amazed at how effective the Snowflake method of designing a novel is. I have never had a story take shape so quickly and with so little agony. It seems that cutting out all the futile guesswork allows deeper, better aspects of the story to surface much more quickly.
Nanowrimo (for which I am doing the Snowflake) is about “quantity not quality”, but I’m inclined to shoot for the best possible raw materials to work with. With this in mind, in addition to working on my Snowflake I will be listening to Ficiton 101 again, and taking Fiction 201 out of it’s wrapper. It may well end up being a terrible first novel in spite of it all, but at least I’m going to learn a lot in the process.