Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Reading Excuses => Topic started by: deckacards on January 30, 2009, 05:29:00 PM
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I'm curious...what does writing a novel look like for YOU?
For me, I start with a tale, a myth-like story that I have to sit down and write out...get going on...it's almost like back story...
Then, I end up thinking, "Okay...flash forward a thousand years...how is the world different as a result of THAT story...and what characters will take a prominent role in it?"
Once I start writing on that...then things get going...some days, I HAVE to sit down and write...other times, ideas are flowing into my head and building off of one another and I HAVE to take notes and layout the story before I forget it...spreadsheets to list characters and chapters come into play...random paragraphs of notes pop up in my story...etc.
And then...it all starts to gradually take shape as I flip chapters around, build on previous notes, etc.... Revisions usually get started when my layout/note-taking gets to a point that I have to start making decisions and making previous chapters align with those decisions (facts, names, etc.).
So...what does your process look like? I'm curious to know how it goes for others....
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Well, generally I have to decide that I want to write something. I'll get a cool idea in my head and I will sit down and write the beginnings of a chapter or two. As soon as that is down, I begin to outline. I can't write past the beginning without an outline, but I can't make an outline without a beginning.
In that way, I think that I am a hybrid writer. Often times when I sit down to begin a story I have no idea whatsoever what I'm going to be writing about, who the characters will be etc. That all comes as the voices in my head argue and eventually reach an accord as to which path is best.
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Yeah...it took me a long time to get to a point where I could make decisions that meant I had to do away with a good idea for an idea that makes more sense...Stephen King calls it being willing to "kill your darlings"...the ability to cut out or re-write parts of a story we love because it just doesn't work.
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Most of my ideas come from dreams--whether those be when I'm asleep, or just random daydreams. They tend to involve more plot than anything else. A bit of world-building too. So that's the stuff that I have in my head first. And that's about the time when I open up a word document and make a few notes based on what I've thought about, just so I don't forget it. Then I start wondering about characters, which sometimes I've already got an idea on them too, but I may or may not still need names (sometimes my dreams name the characters too....It's a little odd, but whatev).
The way Crashers worked was I was on my home for school, visiting for a weekend and the driver of the car and I started talking about how cool it would be to teleport home, and skip the 2 1/2 hour drive altogether. We both that it would cool, and that was the extent of the conversation, but my mind started playing with it, wondering about a world where that was possible--technologically--and then what would happen if it was destroyed? And then I combined that idea with another that I'd been working on, roughly, and BAM! There was Crashers. I still had to get names, but for the most part, I had the workings of plot, and a world to build off of.
As for the writing of it....I got a notebook and started writing down ideas for more plot stuff as they came to me. And I started working on the Prologue. And then Chapter 1. And I got stuck in the middle of that Chapter, so I focused the most on my notebook, getting further in plotting (up to Book 2 and some stuff in Book 3), and just waiting for the actual writer's block to wear off (I wanted to write it all in order) so I could write more.
For the most part, that's kind of how my writing process is. It's slightly different for each project that I work on, but those are the basics.
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I'm still sort of figuring out what my writing process actually entails - i.e. I've spent the last couple of years testing and discarding various methods while beginning to write and discarding various plots and ideas (none of which were really any good, fortunately). I'm fairly certain that I now know the method that is ideal for me, though, that has to count for something.
What it boils down to is essentially the vague idea of a setting and one or two characters in that setting. The characters aren't developed in any kind of detail (I actually called them A and B for quite some time...), I only have a general impression of how they'd act in certain situations. Then I consider the implications of the bits and pieces of setting I have, do a bit of research, and further develop the world in the process. The setting of the novel determines the setting's history, which in turn influences the setting again, etc.
I end up having written a few chapters worth of notes, having read a lot of articles about the feasibility of directed-energy weapons (and, usually, also a number of articles about dinosaurs, viking longships and a bunch of other completely irrelevant junk) and find myself in the posession of a document full of cool ideas that all need to make it into the plot. Commence the outlining, which is what I'm doing right now. When I'm not writing term papers, that is.
For the actual writing part I want to try doing a quick and dirty revision of everything I wrote the previous day, before continuing the story, my reasoning being that revision is easy, so it'll quickly give me the impression of having got some work done. So I'll always be in high spirits while writing, because I'll know that the boring part is over and done with.
I'll let you know how that works out. ;)
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For me its almost like discovering what has already happened. The story is already finished and written, somewhere in my head; I just have to figure out how it went. I know I don't always get it completely right but I'm sure the characters will forgive me :)
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I do things the hard way. Instead of thinking up a plot, world building, or developing characters, what I do first is list about a dozen ideas "tension" ideas. I think let those ideas roll around in my head for about a month, and then sit down and write the opening scene. With the opening scene down on paper, all the ideas of how to weave together click in my mind. I then sit down to write a plot outline, and then write.
Of course, only about two thirds of a really good plot outline makes it to the final draft. As I'm writing the first draft, it often changes. Little ideas come up for unespected places for how to better convay the story and I add them in. The second draft is all about fixing consistency erros, adding depth to the side plots, and scattering info. The third draft is all rewrites.
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When I actually find a good process, I'll let you know. I can tell you this though, characters and dialogue always come to come to me long before plots unless I am out to purposely 'steal' someone else's. Shocker, ain't it? ;)
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I wonder if this thread might better fit the Writing Group board. I mean, we're not the only writers on the forum.
Anyway, my process is only a process in the barest sense of the word, since I often don't start from the same place twice. The only thing that's really the same for me every time is that I have to have more than one idea before I can start anything, even a short stories. (And a lot of my short stories run 1000 words or less. Passage to Zero, the one you guys saw, was the exception.) When I find two ideas that somehow go together, that's when I'm ready to start writing.
Those two ideas can be ridiculously far away from each other... a phrase, a character concept, a plot idea, a setting detail, an image, a theme, or format (some of my work is experimental) are all things I've used as starting points in the past. I don't feel I've got enough to work with until I have two of those ideas sticking to each other in some way.
From there, well, I'm sort of a hybrid of a discovery writer and an outliner. I'll often do a very bare-bones outline of plot, and then I just sit back and let it go where it goes. Usually I don't even stick to the outlines I write, but I will also go back to outlining if I'm really stuck on some aspect of plot.
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I wonder if this thread might better fit the Writing Group board. I mean, we're not the only writers on the forum.
Well...I had put it on here because the original question I had was really aimed at wondering what the writing process was like for those writers whose submissions I would be reviewing. Kind of like being able to peek behind the curtain a bit...
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Now that you mention short stories... for those it's always been full discovery mode for me. That never worked for anything longer, though.
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I see scenes in my mind, like movies or tv. It would probably be more accurate to call them daydreams, (Haha! I'm ninja boy! Take that!) and when I get an idea that I like I go with it. Like some others, I'll go with a rather skimpy out-line. I try to connect these daydreams in some kind of logical fashion. This happend and that happend, but why? And why was he there in the first place. More than likely I'll have started writing before some of these ideas come to me, but I try to have notes or out-lines that I can add them too. Later on I'll find out if it works or not, but I'll have it down, somewhere.
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Um... lessee...
Stall, stall, stall, stall, think about, stall, stall, stall, procrastinate, stall, stall, think about it some more, stall, stall, stall, write a page.
Wash, rinse, repeat as needed.
(When I'm more awake I'll see about a more serious answer.)
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Stall, stall, stall, stall, think about, stall, stall, stall, procrastinate, stall, stall, think about it some more, stall, stall, stall, write a page.
Wash, rinse, repeat as needed.
Well yeah, but we're talking about the parts of the process that don't look identical to everyone else's.
XP
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Um... lessee...
Stall, stall, stall, stall, think about, stall, stall, stall, procrastinate, stall, stall, think about it some more, stall, stall, stall, write a page.
Wash, rinse, repeat as needed.
The only honest man among us! ;D
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For me, it all starts with the characters.
The good ones usually show up in my head and stare at me until I decide to keep them. I'll kick things around in my head for a couple of years (yes, years. I tend to be slow like that. Maybe I'll get faster as I gain more experience in writing and story-telling in general), listen to a lot of music that "sounds like them", and generally just let them reveal their stories to me in their own time.
Once I've soaked up "the feel" of a character for a while, I'll try to puzzle out what the most interesting story about them would be. What would be the most important part of their life? What would the worst possible situation for them to be in? I find that interesting/horrible situation, and then put them in it. Then make it worse.
I outline. Lots of bullet points. I re-arrange things as I go.
Then I write. I am finding that if I put TOO much detail in my outline for a given chapter, it falls flat. I need to free-flow for my prose to work. As long as I know generally what the chapters about, I can make it work.
And most importantly, I make sure my main character arcs are SET and WORKING before I write anything.
That's just me. I have yet to finish a novel, so... we'll see if it actually works!
One more thing. I'm a firm believer that stories are not created. They all live out there -- somewhere -- in the ether, and its just my job as a storyteller to prepare myself in such a way that I am able to hear them tell themselves. It's my job to "tune" my aentenna -- so to speak-- to their frequency. Once I hear the story, I need to translate that to words or to film or whatever. That translation is where the craft of learning to write, or the craft of filmmaking, comes into play.
I know that sounds hokey, possibly even pretentious. But it's a very real thing to me. I've found that shifting my brain to think this way has made a big difference in the quality of my stories and writing.
These are not my stories. I just write them.
(Huh. That's going into my signature. Starting....now)
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I always think in terms of standalone novels, not series, and as a result I spend as little time as possible world building (I hate it...which is an odd thing to say for someone who writes fantasy). I get in, tell my story, and get out with as little a mess as possible. Also, I like to think that my characters are the big attraction point of my stories, so I put them front stage and try to let them shine.
But most of what I write (which I just recently found out belongs in a sub genre called "literary fantasy" via google search) is highly experimental and unorthodox. That's a double edged sword, while I come up with a lot of original ideas, it takes me longer to get them onto paper in a form that is ready to be seen by others, and the audiences that I’m writing towards are far smaller than most others on the board.
And I apologies for all the typos on my last post on this thread…I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to look it over (I can see about six of them with a brief glance, ouch!).
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The only honest man among us! ;D
Deckacards, my good man! Can I call you Deck? Y'see, Deck, I've got this wonderful deal on a bridge you might be interested in! Honest!
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Cue more "for only $50, I can tell you how to avoid people like [reading excuses member]" remarks.
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hehe...my point is just that if I was completely honest...much of my writing process ACTUALLY consists of wrestling with myself to actually sit down and put fingers to keyboard...
But...in my head...I have a plan ;)