How to Write the Ending to Your NaNoWriMo Novel!

– Hello, everyone. My name is Mandi Lynn. I’m the author of the
fantasy novels, Essence and I Am Mercy, and thriller
novel, She’s Not Here, as well as the creator
of AuthorTube Academy, and today, we are talking
about how to write the ending of your NaNoWriMo novel. (soft music) So hopefully if you took part in National Novel Writing Month,
you are very, very close to hitting your goal
of writing 50,000 words as well as summing up your novel and being able to close
the book on a draft one. Now, what I do want to make
a note of is word count. So the goal of National
Novel Writing Month is indeed to write 50,000 words, and to be considered a novel, a novel does have to be 50,000 words, however, the standard
novel you see in stores are about 80,000 words,
usually at least 80,000 words and can go upwards as
much as 150,000 words, depending on the genre. So with that said, a lot of the times, when you are writing your novel, even though you’re almost
at the 50,000 word part, you aren’t quite to the
end of your novel yet. Now, to kind of give you
an idea of word count versus page numbers, I’ll
help you kind of figure out how many words is a book
on your shelf maybe. So usually your standard book, so I’m gonna take Hunger
Games for example, usually your standard book, one page like this is about 250 words. So if you want to figure
out how many words a regular published book is,
you take the amount of pages, so for Hunger Games, it is, we have 374 pages in the Hunger Games. So I’m gonna do some
simple math for you guys. 374 times 250, because on average, there’s about 250 words per page, and that leaves us with
93,500 words in this novel. Now, you’ll notice this novel
isn’t a super thick novel. So with that said, 93,000
words versus 50,000 words is a pretty big difference. So I just want you guys to know, those who are taking part in
National Novel Writing Month, even though you may be
very close to writing about 50,000 words, you are only at about the 200-page word point, because if we’re taking 50,000 words, dividing that by 250,
you’re about at 200 pages. So in The Hunger Games, for example, you’d be at a book that
is about this thick. Now, sometimes you do see
books about this thick, but they’re more of a rarity. They’re not common. Usually, if you want to
tell a story successfully, you do need about 80,000 words, and 80,000 words is about 300 pages. And if you start looking
at books on your shelves, you’ll notice most books
are about 300 pages. So that is actually what
you tend to want to aim for, and that is, of course,
if you actually plan on publishing your novel. Now, if you don’t plan
on publishing your book, then go ahead, write as
many or as little words as your heart desires, but if
you’re planning on publishing, you do want to try and
aim for industry standard, which is usually somewhere
around 80,000 words. Nine times out of 10,
usually more, sometimes less. Okay, so with that said, if you are trying to write the ending of
your NaNoWriMo novel, please know that you will usually need to extend past November to
write the ending of your novel. You’ll need to write
into December, January, however long it takes you to get to the natural ending of your book. So there are a few
different paths you can take if you would like to
finish writing the ending of your National Novel
Writing Month novel. If you’re feeling burnt
out but you still know that there’s somewhere
the story needs to go, what I suggest doing is somewhere, whether it’s at the end
of your Word document or it’s in a separate notebook, take notes on what you
want to happen next. Now, this doesn’t have to be
anything fancy or extensive. You can literally just write bullet notes. This is something I do all the time whenever I’m finished
up writing for the day, before I just sit down and stop, I actually write bullet points of what I want to start writing tomorrow. That way, when I sit down, I
kind of know where I left off. But the same goes for if
you’re taking a longer break because NaNoWriMo does leave you feeling burnt out by the end of the month, so one of the solutions to that is by indeed taking a break, but you don’t want to just stop writing. You want to kind of make sure
you know where you left off. So take as many notes as possible. If you want, make a mini outline
of the rest of the novel. That way, you don’t come
back later and feel lost, like, oh my God, I forgot what
was supposed to happen next, ’cause that would be a bummer and we don’t want that to happen. And then when you are taking a break, make sure you keep a
notebook on you at all times because you never know when
inspiration is gonna strike. Now, most writers do
tend to keep a notebook on them anyways, but this
is especially important when you’re taking a break from your novel because a lot of times, when you’re writing, writing, writing, you can feel burnt out, the
inspiration doesn’t come, but once you start taking a break, the inspiration starts coming naturally and the juices are
flowing and you won’t want to just forget whatever
brilliancy you come up with. You want to make sure
it stays written down. Now, when it does come to taking a break, don’t take a break for too long. What I recommend is that
instead of taking a break, you just lower your word count goal. So instead of, say,
writing 3,000 words a day, just tell yourself you only
need to write 1,000 words a day and make sure that you realize
it’s okay to take a break, like you only need to
write three days a week or five days a week instead
of seven days a week. But if you absolutely are
feeling over-pressured and overworked, it’s okay to
take a break for a few days, but honestly, I don’t recommend taking a break for more than a week because just you won’t feel
as inclined to go back to it, and not only that, when
you do go back to it, you’re gonna have a harder time jumping back into the story again. So it’s always dangerous sometimes when you’re really into a novel to take a break for too long,
and take it from someone who has learned multiple
times the hard way. Now, if you aren’t feeling burnt out, you can indeed keep writing,
whether you keep writing just by lowering your word count goal, or if you’ve formed this
amazing habit in that now you have this habit to
write 3,000 words a day, because that’s an amazing habit to have and an easy habit to
break, so if you have it and you’ve got a good grip
on it, just roll with it. So my recommendation is
to just keep writing, keep the habit flowing,
and to keep pushing until you get to the end of that novel and let the words flow until you feel like you’ve reached a natural end. So I hope that was
helpful for all you guys. Let me know in the comments down below what the word count is of your current NaNoWriMo
work in progress. I hope this video was
helpful, and if it was, please let me know or
request future videos. As always, be sure to give
this video a thumbs up, comment down below, and subscribe. Thank you for watching.