Percolation Time

TheIT · Sep 27, 2005

No, this isn't a question about coffee.

How long do you think about an idea for a story or novel before you start writing? Do you let the idea percolate for a bit before putting fingers to keyboard, or do you just start writing? Do you have a different approach for a novel vs. shorter work?

three seven · Sep 27, 2005

I'd been thinking about the last one I started for about 5 years. I still had no idea what I was doing with it, and abandoned it after about a page and a half to write the current one. I guess I just can't work that way, 'cause I thought about this one for all of a week before I started to write, and it's going just fine. :Thumbs:

pepperlandgirl · Sep 27, 2005

It depends. Sometimes an idea hits me out of the blue: "Haha! I'd love to see this happen to Character X!" and then I get writing. Sometimes, though, I might get a vague notion, like while I'm watching television...and I have to let it grow on me. For example, the project I'm working on now went something like this:

*watching some special on A&E*
Why <I>would</I> teenage boys kill for no reason?
Hmmm, could a teenage boy kill somebody and grow up to have a normal life if he doesn't get caught?
What if he did have a normal life?
What if it was a group of them?
What if they finally seek each other out to question <I>why</I>?
What if nobody has an answer?

By the time I hit the last question (over the course of about a month or so) I was ready to start writing. Now the story is coming at a pretty good rate of 1k-2k words/day.

KTC · Sep 27, 2005

I sometimes watch the lives of my characters for a while before I write anything down. I like to come at the writing part of the story from the perspective of memory, if that doesn't sound completely crazy. I run through the story for days, weeks, sometimes months...think it all through, watch my characters interact, learn who they are...then I sit and write like I am writing my own memories. I've gone as long as a year before writing something, and as little as a few hours. It depends on how involved they get in my head. Eventually I have to purge to make room for more ideas.

Honey Nut Loop · Sep 27, 2005

I usually get a vague idea. Enough to get two or three chapters out. Then i stop and work out where abouts i want to story to end up. Then i write the rest. Then re-write. Edit. Re-write... You get the idea.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 27, 2005

Perculate

TheIT said:
No, this isn't a question about coffee.

How long do you think about an idea for a story or novel before you start writing? Do you let the idea percolate for a bit before putting fingers to keyboard, or do you just start writing? Do you have a different approach for a novel vs. shorter work?

You can probably measure my perculation time in minutes. When it's time to write a story, novel or short, I sit down, think of a title, and start writing. Getting the opening right is what takes time, but it's mostly a matter of putting a good character into a bad situation, having the opening ask a question, pose a problem, or both, and then having the rest of the novel answer the question and solve the problem.

I assume my subconscious is where the real perculating goes on. I think this tends to happen when you write pretty much every day. The subconscious knows it needs to keep a fresh supply of stories at hand, so it works on them constantly. At least, I never have to spend long hours just trying to think of what to write. When I'm ready, the stories are ready.

And now and then, short story or novel, the thing just pops into my head from nowhere. These often make the best stories.

fallenangelwriter · Sep 27, 2005

The minute i get an idea, i write somehting, anything. a fragment of a scene. the middle of the story, or the end, or whatever.

I don't necessarily write the whole story just then. often i abandon my abortiveeffort, at leats temporarily. later i modify the diea or the execution and try again. when i get somthing that feels right, i run with it.

LightShadow · Sep 27, 2005

Some I began writing instantly, others (in brief summary form) sat in my files becoming something more and different than the original idea when it finally came to writing the novel. Sometimes I will write and rewrite in my head before my fingers ever hit the keys.

JAlpha · Sep 27, 2005

I start a paper and computer file for every idea I get. I'm not always sure if my idea will result in a poem, short story, or novel. What matters most to me is the kernal of an idea.

From there, I don't seem to have a great deal of control over which files grow and eventually become a new piece, and which ideas will linger without any further development.

My selection process for deciding which ideas to work on appears to be controlled by things that are going on around me that may draw me toward one idea or another more than the rest.

With the high volume of ideas I always have running through my head, if I didn't organize them I'd be lost. Plus, with a file cabinet full of ideas, I never suffer from writer's block. I may become blocked on a specific idea, but with so many other ideas to work with, I don't fret about an occasional block.

Euan H. · Sep 27, 2005

Jamesaritchie said:
You can probably measure my perculation time in minutes. ...

I assume my subconscious is where the real perculating goes on. I think this tends to happen when you write pretty much every day. The subconscious knows it needs to keep a fresh supply of stories at hand, so it works on them constantly. At least, I never have to spend long hours just trying to think of what to write. When I'm ready, the stories are ready.

Yet again, I end up going 'me too' to one of James' posts. I outline before I write--but the outline just starts with 'what would happen if...' or 'wouldn't it be cool if...' or 'Hah! I could really get people hooked if I...' The rest of the novel comes from there. After that point really, it's just about asking the same question over and over: 'so what does the character do then?'

As for writing every day--I agree there as well. I'm trying to do around 2,000 words a day--and the file I have for story ideas keeps growing. I've got a list of ten or so ideas that'd make good novels, and a mass of fragments, snippets and one-line ideas for short stories. The time I have trouble thinking of ideas is when I stop writing.

aruna · Sep 28, 2005

Jamesaritchie said:
You can probably measure my perculation time in minutes. When it's time to write a story, novel or short, I sit down, think of a title, and start writing. Getting the opening right is what takes time, but it's mostly a matter of putting a good character into a bad situation, having the opening ask a question, pose a problem, or both, and then having the rest of the novel answer the question and solve the problem.

I assume my subconscious is where the real perculating goes on. I think this tends to happen when you write pretty much every day. The subconscious knows it needs to keep a fresh supply of stories at hand, so it works on them constantly. At least, I never have to spend long hours just trying to think of what to write. When I'm ready, the stories are ready.

And now and then, short story or novel, the thing just pops into my head from nowhere. These often make the best stories.

My process is almost identical to James'.
The very most I know in advance is "that" there is something to be written. I have no idea what it is.
An example:
Last September I went to my home country of Guyana, and when I came back I "knew" that I had a novel to write, set entirley there. I had to do some planning. I have a fairly busy life that leaves litle time for writing; therefor, I'd have to "make" time. I decided to go for 4 am, and I decided I'd start on 1st October, and write until 6.45 each day, when it'd be time to wake my daughter for school. That was all I thought about it.
On October 1st I got up, made myself some tea, turned on my computer, and started to write. I had not the least idea who the MC would be or what the story would be about.
I wrote every day, including weekends and holidays.
Two months later, on December 1st, I had a first draft of 165000 words.

The subconscious mind knows how to write stories. Trust it implicitely. Tell it to write when you want/need to write, and it will obey.

Saanen · Sep 28, 2005

Often I seem to move from idea to story in hours, but if I think about it later I realize that the idea has been simmering for a while without me concentrating on it. Sometimes I'm more aware of the process, and that's when I get started on a project and have to shelve it for a while until it's, er, cooked a little longer, I guess.

I'm all excited today because not only do I have time to write after about ten (yeah, I should be getting ready to go to that meeting right now), I've got a juicy story all lined up to work on. Part of the idea came from a dream I had a few years ago that I wrote down, and it's been simmering ever since. This morning (after thinking hard about the plot just before I went to bed last night), I woke up with some additional ideas to link into what I've got.

scarletpeaches · Sep 28, 2005

I need to be more like james. I procrastinate too much, although there have been times when I've concentrated on writing one thing while letting another sit on the back burner, getting used to characters, ironing out the plot.

I'm less like that now, though. I tend to dive right in more often, although I could probably be slightly more self-disciplined. Just get on with it, so to speak.

LightShadow · Sep 28, 2005

Sometimes I just create a wild situation, and then sit back and watch how my characters work their way out of it.

kristie911 · Sep 28, 2005

My first novel literally hit me out of nowhere...we were on a family vacation and driving across Wyoming and suddenly I start yelling "Pull into this gas station!" I ran in, bought a black spiral notebook and wrote for hours...most of it I couldn't read later because we were driving and I never mastered that talent for writing legibly in a moving vehicle. But I couldn't write fast enough. I wrote the first draft longhand it about six weeks.

My second and third, I stewed on them for quite awhile before putting it on paper but usually, I only know the characters when I start...not the ending. I let them tell me the story. They usually surprise me!

LightShadow · Sep 28, 2005

kristie911 said:
My first novel literally hit me out of nowhere...we were on a family vacation and driving across Wyoming and suddenly I start yelling "Pull into this gas station!" I ran in, bought a black spiral notebook and wrote for hours...most of it I couldn't read later because we were driving and I never mastered that talent for writing legibly in a moving vehicle. But I couldn't write fast enough. I wrote the first draft longhand it about six weeks.

My second and third, I stewed on them for quite awhile before putting it on paper but usually, I only know the characters when I start...not the ending. I let them tell me the story. They usually surprise me!

I couldn't have said it better myself. Sometimes I have an inkling of the ending, but it usually forms through the actions of my characters.

Higgins · Sep 22, 2006

Nice thread, I'll tell you in advance of any advances

TheIT said:
No, this isn't a question about coffee.

How long do you think about an idea for a story or novel before you start writing? Do you let the idea percolate for a bit before putting fingers to keyboard, or do you just start writing? Do you have a different approach for a novel vs. shorter work?

But I was terrified the whole time I was reading this thread. I kept expecting to hit a post that read: "It's not important how you think about a story or how you see it coming together. The important thing is getting a big advance."

How did the big advance team miss this thread? I mean not that there's anything wrong with a big advance. Do some topics just fail to trigger even a hint of a big advance? Not that there's anything wrong with thinking about a story in advance, I mean before the big advance.

badducky · Sep 22, 2006

Mm... coffee.

That's a great idea. I'm going to have some right now!

(this methodology is closely related to my story-telling techniques.)

TheIT · Sep 22, 2006

aruna said:
The subconscious mind knows how to write stories. Trust it implicitely. Tell it to write when you want/need to write, and it will obey.

I'm finding it interesting rereading this thread at this time. When I started the thread, I had just come up with a new character and the seed for a novel and was wondering whether I should just jump right in and write or whether I needed to plan. So I played with the idea for a while, wrote a few scenes, then set it aside for NaNoWriMo in November and came back to it earlier this year. On my second pass at the idea I'm at 50,000 words and counting, and am hoping to finish the first draft of a novel by the end of the year.

I'm finding a lot of truth in Aruna's comment about the subconscious mind. Sometimes when I sit down to write I have just a vague idea about the scene I need to work on, but once I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, everything comes together and the story moves forward.

Nickie · Sep 22, 2006

Working out the general idea for a new book normally takes some time. Can be one year, two years... But once I've got the general idea, other ideas keep pouring in, and I feel like the novel is writing itself!

Nickie

wordmonkey · Sep 22, 2006

Sometimes I actively hold off writing once I have the idea.

I'm not entirely sure how or why this happens, but the best way I can describe it is that my writing is like one of those kid's airplanes that works with a rubberband powered propeller. Sometimes just a couple of twists isn't enough and I gotta keep on turning and turning and turning so that when I let go, that propeller (my writing) goes like demon.

Y' know, the more of these things I answer, the less sure I get about my own sanity!

Papa'sLiver · Sep 22, 2006

It depends. The novel I'm working on now, I worked on, in my head and in treatment form, for over a year. It's based on an old screenplay of mine from years ago.

The first novel I wrote was an idea that just popped into my head, and I think I thought about it for about a week, tops.

Percolation Time

TheIT

Infuriatingly Theoretical

three seven

(Graeme Cameron)

pepperlandgirl

American Aquarium Drinker

KTC

Stand in the Place Where You Live

Honey Nut Loop

Jamesaritchie

fallenangelwriter

LightShadow

defender of the blahs!

JAlpha

Smilie Fanatic

Euan H.

Unspeakable

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

Saanen

scarletpeaches

LightShadow

defender of the blahs!

kristie911

Happy to be here

LightShadow

defender of the blahs!

Higgins

badducky

No Time For Chitchat, Kemosabe.

TheIT

Infuriatingly Theoretical

Nickie

Not too old to learn

wordmonkey

ook

Papa'sLiver