Your methods of writing

I establish very little before I start. No notes or outline, just a nebulous idea. Characters appear and talk to each other, things happen. After a while the world becomes rather filled. When there’s enough complexity, I become resistant to adding new characters or subplots. Somewhere past the halfway point, that’s when I get a clearer picture of how it’s going to go, but even then, I may not know the actual denouement until I write it.

I think until my head hurts before I put anything on paper. But I don't really do the whole portfolio thing. It's mostly in my head, most of the time. I might do some outlines, or do a little plotting, but mostly I just sit down and start typing. Between BIC sessions I do tend to think a lot on the plot, and listening to my characters talk... oh yeah, they talk to me.

i'm into outlines. i think they're hot.

very hot.

Do you guys have any idea how much I hate when I have nothing to add to a thread? Damn that Leo.

Starting

DirtySyko said:

I didn't know where to put this, so I thought this forum would be good. Since people come here to mentor others, I figured people would enlighten the rest of us with their methods of writing.

So when you get ideas for a new book, how do you start? Do you begin taking notes? If you start taking notes of your ideas, do you do it like a diary, by dating everything you write?

How do you go about developing characters? Do you think of characters FIRST then let them build the plot? Or do you think of a plot, and build characters around the plot?

Everyday you write what do you keep track of? Word count? The date?

I could ask a ton more questions, but I better stop... I'm just wondering overall the process YOU go through while writing.

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I don;t get ideas for new books. When I want to write a new book, I write down a title I like, drop a couple of spaces, and start writing. In the opening, I stick what I hope is a good character into what I hope is an interesting situation, and then let him work his way out of it.

I follow the protagonist around, and write down what he does, sees, hears, feels, thinks, etc.

I do not plot. I hate plotting and I nearly always dislike novels that have been plotted. I'm firmly with Stephen King and ray Bradbury where plotting is concerned. Just tella story. If you do this, plot comes along as a byproduct.

The only thing I keep track of is daily word count. I don't keep notes of any kind, and I never write down ideas. If I can't remember an idea without writing it down, it's an idea unworthy of a novel.

I sit, I play music (Napster) and I write. I don't even really think about it--I just write whatever comes into my head and go from there--starting with a character.

Then I let my fingers be the outlet of the characters as I write out this bit of their life.

Only thing I keep track of daily is word count.

I think Jamesaritchie said it best. In my case, I have two roomates who are movie fanatics. We constantly argue about plot and story mechanics. My present work came out of a "what if" scenario that we all thought was pretty clever and original, so I started to hammer out the script, without giving any thought to outlines, notes or guidelines. It just took off on itself, and I've approached 93,000 words in 70 days. I'm now wrapping up the script with a huge battle and resolution (which has blocked me up a little bit), but I don't have that fear and intimidation that I would have if I had meticulously outlined this book. It gave me freedom to explore run with it. So this book was an explosion out of my head. If they could all be so easy!

Triceratops

i'm convinced!

i'll never outline again.

William Haskins said:

i'll never outline again.

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Smart move, because if you want your characters to perform for you, you have to give them free will.

William--there's nothing wrong with outlines at all. I had to use them for my non-fiction book. And I can see now that the edit on my first draft is going to be a beeeaocth, because I have so many loose ends to tie up. Every time I go to sleep I'm dreaming up just one more plot problem that I neglected to take care of. So it seems like a tradeoff. I feel that I'm going to work much harder to clean this script up, but I got it written in record time. As you approach 70,000 words or so, you're memory (or mine) starts to fail. I can't remember pertinent dates, times, births, events, and sci-fi terminology that I invented in the begining. My futuristic Hummer is called a Landcruncher, Chummer model. It took me an hour to find that term in the book so I could use it again. I have over 150 such terms that are exclusive to the text. I think for sci-fi and fantasy we should divise a vocabulary database at the very least to keep track of our funny little made-up words.

Tri

Outlines

No, there's nothing wrong with outlines. Some very good writers use them. I do, however, think outlined, plotted novels read differently than non-outlined, non-plotted novels.

Process does affect product. I've always thought the best way for a new writer to decide whether or not to outline is to look into the writing methods of several of his favorite writers. The way your favorite writers go about it is probably the way you should at least try first.

When I did this with a dozen or so writers I most enjoy reading, I found only one of them outlines, and he does so very lightly. His entire outline is about 2,000 words that touches only the high points.

Writing methods and hang-ups

If you aren't mentoring with an established author, I suggest purchasing a writing software program to help you through these creative humps. I am not endorsing, but suggesting something like DramaticaPro, which might resolve the plot vs character-based fiction conflicts you may be experiencing.

Best of luck!

Jamesaritchie said:

I don;t get ideas for new books. When I want to write a new book, I write down a title I like, drop a couple of spaces, and start writing. In the opening, I stick what I hope is a good character into what I hope is an interesting situation, and then let him work his way out of it.

I follow the protagonist around, and write down what he does, sees, hears, feels, thinks, etc.

I do not plot. I hate plotting and I nearly always dislike novels that have been plotted. I'm firmly with Stephen King and ray Bradbury where plotting is concerned. Just tella story. If you do this, plot comes along as a byproduct.

The only thing I keep track of is daily word count. I don't keep notes of any kind, and I never write down ideas. If I can't remember an idea without writing it down, it's an idea unworthy of a novel.

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This is how it works for me also with fiction. Most times I don't have a title. I somewhat have a concept in mind and I just write. I let the characters lead me. Although outlining does provide a sense of direction, it doesn't cut it for me. I do understand it's purpose and understand why some do it. I guess to sum it up, it's all about what works for us individually. I do agree that it is a must-do for non-fiction.

Kiva Wolfe said:

If you aren't mentoring with an established author, I suggest purchasing a writing software program to help you through these creative humps. I am not endorsing, but suggesting something like DramaticaPro, which might resolve the plot vs character-based fiction conflicts you may be experiencing.

Best of luck!

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My own experience is that purchasing such software is the worst thing a new writer can do. To say the least, the success rate of new writers who use writing software as abysmal.

William Haskins said:

that's what god thought, and look what it got him.

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It got Him great stories, unpredictable plots, and a whole world of wonderful, and highly individualistic, characters.

nonfiction

Vanessa said:

I do agree that it is a must-do for non-fiction.

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Not a must. I've known a goodly number of nonfiction writers who didn't plan or outline. If you're writing a user manual or a technical book, outlining is probably necessary, but most types of nonfiction can be written as well without an outline as novels can be.

This is extremely interesting to me. When I started writing, I outlined how the story would progress using the high points and a smattering of lesser ones. Now, I'm at the point where I write without any real outline, though I will jot down a few ideas that I think might work well in that manuscript just to avoid forgetting those. Instead, I draw upon some of the existing characters and add in new ones as needed since I'm working on a series at present.

Of course, I find it disconcerting at times when I realize that I have absolutely no idea of how the story will end. At other times, I marvel at how some of the pieces fit together, especially when the fit isn't apparent at first, but reveals itself slowly.

But I can only echo what others are saying. Use the method that works for you.

You can never write fast enough that your story jumps the gun.

Triceratops

the story is usually about five or six paragraphs ahead of me--I must learn to type faster---I only do about 120 WPM now.

120

SRHowen said:

the story is usually about five or six paragraphs ahead of me--I must learn to type faster---I only do about 120 WPM now.

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I can type fairly fast, but if I write more then ten or twelve words per minute, I produce ca-ca.

Jamesaritchie said:

I can type fairly fast, but if I write more then ten or twelve words per minute, I produce ca-ca.

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When I'm in the flow, I can't write fast enough...and I type very fast!

Wow. We outliners are a minority. Maybe we can apply for a tax break.

Jamesaritchie said:

It got Him great stories, unpredictable plots, and a whole world of wonderful, and highly individualistic, characters.

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I think he was talking about cheeseburgers.

Time

Julie Worth said:

When I'm in the flow, I can't write fast enough...and I type very fast!

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Ten or twelve words per minute is when I'm in the flow. Of course, ten words per minute means a finsihed 100,000 word novel in only 167 hours. At only two hours per day, five days per week, that's a finished first draft in only, what, seventeen weeks? That's about three per year, even at two hours per day with weekends off.

I can write faster than this, but if I do what I write isn't publishable. I follow the old carpenter advice of "measure twice, cut once," only I phrase it "Think twice, write once."

At ten or twelve, or if I'm really flying, fourteen words per minute, what I write has been thought about twice before it goes down on paper. When I get any faster than this, it isn't, and for me, the quality of the writing suffers greatly.