Tips & Tricks for ONC: Episode 1 Time to Prepare for ONC 2023!

Welcome to The WriMo Blog where I share my monthly writing goals, project progress, and more! Today's post is Episode #1 for my blog series, Trips & Tricks for Wattpad's Open Novella Contest of 2023, and what you can do in preparation if you decide you want to participate this year! If this interests you, keep on reading!

Before we get into everything, I just want to remind everyone that you can see all WriMo posts up to 2 days earlier when you become a member of my Write Monthly tier on my BuyMeaCoffee page. If you're not a member, but would love access to early posts and exclusive content, come check it out! I have some really great announcements coming which will only be known through that membership, so don't miss out!

The 2023 edition of Wattpad’s Open Novella Contest (aka ONC) is upon us, and I am here to share some tips ‘n tricks for anyone who wants to participate this year. These tips are from my own experience, compiled with things I picked up during my participation in the ONC2022. But first, let me tell you the one rule you should know about the ONC;

The #1 Rule is DO NOT “publish” your ONC book to Wattpad before February 1st. This is very important to the first checkpoint submission. The contest moderators will be looking at the “first published” date (see image ►) and even if you meet the first deadline, any date prior to Feb. 1st will disqualify your story. I know, it is very tempting to have the book posted to be prepared, but you have to hold back. Trust me; I watched many ticked writers get disqualified for this small detail. So even if you are a couple of days behind in making your book public, that’s perfectly fine. Now that we’ve got this Rule out of the way, I can tell you about choosing prompts.

The contest moderators give new prompts every year. Prompts from last year will not be making reappearances in the new version of the contest. Additionally, the moderators outdid themselves with the prompts, I do not know how they will do better this time around, but we will just have to wait and see.

In terms of choosing which prompt to base your novella on, that is truly up to you. But if you feel you are overwhelmed by the choices and you can’t seem to decide, here’s a trick. When I was choosing my prompt, I went through all the categories, wrote down the ones I liked the most, and put them in a hat. Yes, the great “Sorting Hat” helped me choose what I would be writing. I even made a TikTok as I pulled the paper from the hat so there was evidence of which prompt I chose. Doing this added some extra fun to the game.

Okay, it’s time to get into the tools, supplies and self-care section. These are important for any writer, no matter the circumstance. I don’t know about you, but I cannot write any story without a notebook. Even if it’s just to put down the initial idea, I need a notebook handy for my notes. This is a necessity for any writer. We take notes, it’s what we do. 

Writing software. The main three (3) I’ve seen mentioned are MS Word, GoogleDocs, and Scrivener. I believe Mac users include Pages in this list, especially if you’re looking for free options. I have used all of these (except pages as I am a Windows user), plus OpenOffice and LibreOffice Writer which are both free to download/install. They work just like MS Word. If you’re hoping to minimize your distractions, GoogleDocs with the offline access turned on is the best way to avoid getting pulled away from full-focus writing. (I have more to say about this, but I will include it in a different post.)

Word tracking is extremely important because during ONC you must meet three word counts; 2,000, 8,000, and finally 20,000. The first 2k is an easy achievement during the first month/4-weeks. You could even pass it if you wanted to, but its a good idea to keep in mind how many words you’ve got because its a requirement to include your checkpoint count when you submit the first time. I use the NaNoWriMo website to keep track of my project goals. (If you would like a post explaining how you can utilize the NaNoWriMo tracking to your advantage, comment below!)

Another necessity is index cards. Whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or someone in the middle, a stack of index cards will help you see your story on a different medium. If you’ve got ten scenes written, but you feel they are not in the right order, you can write single-sentence scenes on the cards and move them around until you feel your story is going in the direction you want it. This is, of course, a method used by plotters and is a form of outlining. If you don’t like outlining, or its a method that does not work in your writing process, that’s perfectly okay!

I think this is a good chunk of tips for now. I am actually working on another post about setting aside time to write every day through the 12 weeks. Trust me, even though its only 20k, setting aside time to write is useful when you have a busy lifestyle. Additionally, I am going to be talking about some timed writing sessions and more! Be on the lookout for that!

Thank you so much for being here! I hope this post was helpful to you in some shape or form. If you’re an ONC vet who happened to pop in, what are your tips for ONC prep? Comment below, we want to know!

Stay safe, stay awesome. See you in the funny papers!