Okay, there's really only one, but it's killer.
This one is as controversial as stem cells in Utah. Many great writers, like Stephen King, advocate responding to a story idea by simply sitting down and letting it rip, allowing the muse to take over and guide you toward your story. If you're King, if you're someone who has mastered the issues of structure, character, theme and execution that comprise solid storytelling, this could work... the story would flow from your brain with everything in the right place.
Imagine Tiger Woods telling a would-be professional golfer, who hasn't played the game all that long, that she should just "get out there and swing." Such advice from writers who think their way is the only way is irresponsible and dangerous.
What this approach essentially says is that you use the writing process -- actually creating a draft -- as a vehicle to explore your story options. To find the story, to develop the characters, to explore your themes. Which means, you'll need draft after draft to uncover your options and explore them (how the fit into the flow) before you come up with the optimal mix. Jeffrey Deaver brags he does 22 drafts of every novel he writes. Guess he's no Stephen King afterall.
I say this is an insane way to write a book. Why? Because you can develop the story, or at least 95 % of it, BEFORE you write a draft. You can engage in the very same wonderful creative exploration process without spending two months of your life writing a draft. When you become an architect of your story in the form of a blueprint, or a sequential outline and a list of checklist-driven components -- imagine a builder arriving at a job site with the intention of "just start building" with the hope of coming up with a functional design after several tries... even King and Deaver would think this is nuts... -- it all goes faster, it's smoother, it's clearer, and it takes a fraction of the time. And what you end up with is orders of magnitude BETTER than if you just winged it.
You'll still find dead ends and story problems this way, but instead of trying to engineer the fix into your manuscript-- this is what happens when you encounter a problem mid-draft; you try to fix it without starting over, because starting over sucks -- you'll fix it at the outline stage before you even start.
Does this work? Well, I sold the first draft of my first novel this way, and then three more. Only one required a rewrite at the editor's request. And this was with a major NY publisher. I base my writing workshops on this developmental process, and my instructional website. You owe it to yourself to investigate writing your next project this way... after 20 years of teaching, I've never had a writing student say it doesn't help them, even just a little (most say it has changed their writing life). Some say it's the best thing about writing they've ever heard.
Stephen King, you're a genius... but leave the teaching to the professionals.
This one is as controversial as stem cells in Utah. Many great writers, like Stephen King, advocate responding to a story idea by simply sitting down and letting it rip, allowing the muse to take over and guide you toward your story. If you're King, if you're someone who has mastered the issues of structure, character, theme and execution that comprise solid storytelling, this could work... the story would flow from your brain with everything in the right place.
Imagine Tiger Woods telling a would-be professional golfer, who hasn't played the game all that long, that she should just "get out there and swing." Such advice from writers who think their way is the only way is irresponsible and dangerous.
What this approach essentially says is that you use the writing process -- actually creating a draft -- as a vehicle to explore your story options. To find the story, to develop the characters, to explore your themes. Which means, you'll need draft after draft to uncover your options and explore them (how the fit into the flow) before you come up with the optimal mix. Jeffrey Deaver brags he does 22 drafts of every novel he writes. Guess he's no Stephen King afterall.
I say this is an insane way to write a book. Why? Because you can develop the story, or at least 95 % of it, BEFORE you write a draft. You can engage in the very same wonderful creative exploration process without spending two months of your life writing a draft. When you become an architect of your story in the form of a blueprint, or a sequential outline and a list of checklist-driven components -- imagine a builder arriving at a job site with the intention of "just start building" with the hope of coming up with a functional design after several tries... even King and Deaver would think this is nuts... -- it all goes faster, it's smoother, it's clearer, and it takes a fraction of the time. And what you end up with is orders of magnitude BETTER than if you just winged it.
You'll still find dead ends and story problems this way, but instead of trying to engineer the fix into your manuscript-- this is what happens when you encounter a problem mid-draft; you try to fix it without starting over, because starting over sucks -- you'll fix it at the outline stage before you even start.
Does this work? Well, I sold the first draft of my first novel this way, and then three more. Only one required a rewrite at the editor's request. And this was with a major NY publisher. I base my writing workshops on this developmental process, and my instructional website. You owe it to yourself to investigate writing your next project this way... after 20 years of teaching, I've never had a writing student say it doesn't help them, even just a little (most say it has changed their writing life). Some say it's the best thing about writing they've ever heard.
Stephen King, you're a genius... but leave the teaching to the professionals.
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