Hmmm. I do something similar, although I don't do much actual planning; I do make occasional notes but they tend to be scruffy and incomprehensible and are littered all over my desk when I'm working. The question I usually ask myself is what the scene needs to achieve - an emotional development or a plot twist or the introduction of a new character - and perhaps I'll jot down a couple of lines of dialogue beforehand. If I get stuck at all, the way I get out of it is to write a later scene and then go back and fill in the gap ... because the destination determines the path, as it were
( ... )
Sounds familiar. :) The writing process and the difficulty in describing it.
I have to admit to generally not bothering to read much about other people's process. It works for them. Doesn't mean it'll work for me. I found this particular advice interesting because of my connected realization that it might be slightly easier to write in layers, as it were -- lay down the skeleton, then flesh it out in subsequent passes...
I seem to have developed (aside from the idiocy of getting out of the habit of writing) a couple of things that look like they might be good habits, only turn out (I think) to be fairly stupid ones. Like trying to write through from beginning to end without jumping around, other than to make notes of things that happen later. I'm more and more convinced that breaking myself of my early habit of writing down whatever came to me and then fitting it together later was a truly stupid move I really need to unlearn.
If it helps, which it may not, I find that every story seems to demand a slightly different technique anyway, and half the battle with any given project is finding a way of working with it. I've got abandoned stories and novels dating back nearly 30 years which were abandoned not so much because the subject matter didn't work or the story didn't hold up but because I was struggling so much to find a *way* of writing them. Mix-and-match definitely seems to be the solution for me, though - follow your inspiration in the first instance, and deal with the technical aspects afterwards!!!
"follow your inspiration in the first instance, and deal with the technical aspects afterwards"
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge, Cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!"
*grin* Sorry, couldn't help myself.
Actually, it does help, and I think you're right -- different stories require different approaches. It's easy to get sucked into thinking that there's a right and wrong way of doing things, or that there's only one way your creative process works. I suspect that's a generally constrictive way of doing things that might work for a time, but ultimately can become a problem.
I have the slowest possible approach to writing - I do the first draft of most of my stories in longhand! Being forced to write so slowly seems to let the ideas bubble up as I go.
But, very rarely, I get the dialogue for an entire scene downloaded into my head. So I put that down while I've still got it, and go back and put in descriptions, reactions and body language later. That sames to be them same sort of thing you're going to try.
Generally I get the visuals first and I know which ones belong to which story. So I try to write the scene for each visual, then I join them up. It's like bacteria growing on a petri dish.
There's something to be said for long-hand. I find when I need to do that (I'm somewhere I can't take my computer) that it ends up being a useful step in the process, as my first editing pass happens when I type it in. On the other hand, I do so relatively little hand-writing that my hand gets sore after far too short a time. And sometimes I can barely read my own writing...
Sounds like your process is similar to what's being described and/or the habit I may have stupidly broken myself of (see reply to theficklepickle) -- get down what you have and join it all up as you go. I really seriously think I need to stop telling myself "yeah, yeah, but that part comes later, so hold your horses and write it then." Great way to stifle whatever momentum is building up and forget that great part I had in mind by the time I get to where it fits in the narrative.
Perhaps long-hand suits my petri-dish method. I can write stuff on one side of the file paper, then shift it around in the ringbinder until it's in the right place, and scrawl notes or extra lines and/or scenes on the blank facing page. It uses a lot of paper, but anything that works...
Sounds like a nicely concrete way of working -- very hands on and physical. There are a lot of techno "innovations" for writers designed to do something similar in the world of word processing and such, but there's nothing like being able to physically manipulate your story, I would think.
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I have to admit to generally not bothering to read much about other people's process. It works for them. Doesn't mean it'll work for me. I found this particular advice interesting because of my connected realization that it might be slightly easier to write in layers, as it were -- lay down the skeleton, then flesh it out in subsequent passes...
I seem to have developed (aside from the idiocy of getting out of the habit of writing) a couple of things that look like they might be good habits, only turn out (I think) to be fairly stupid ones. Like trying to write through from beginning to end without jumping around, other than to make notes of things that happen later. I'm more and more convinced that breaking myself of my early habit of writing down whatever came to me and then fitting it together later was a truly stupid move I really need to unlearn.
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Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,
Cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!"
*grin* Sorry, couldn't help myself.
Actually, it does help, and I think you're right -- different stories require different approaches. It's easy to get sucked into thinking that there's a right and wrong way of doing things, or that there's only one way your creative process works. I suspect that's a generally constrictive way of doing things that might work for a time, but ultimately can become a problem.
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But, very rarely, I get the dialogue for an entire scene downloaded into my head. So I put that down while I've still got it, and go back and put in descriptions, reactions and body language later. That sames to be them same sort of thing you're going to try.
Generally I get the visuals first and I know which ones belong to which story. So I try to write the scene for each visual, then I join them up. It's like bacteria growing on a petri dish.
I just wish the process were easier!
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Sounds like your process is similar to what's being described and/or the habit I may have stupidly broken myself of (see reply to theficklepickle) -- get down what you have and join it all up as you go. I really seriously think I need to stop telling myself "yeah, yeah, but that part comes later, so hold your horses and write it then." Great way to stifle whatever momentum is building up and forget that great part I had in mind by the time I get to where it fits in the narrative.
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