Categories: General Bitching • Random Musings
Tags: nora roberts, writing
by SB Sarah • Friday, July 11, 2008 at 08:54 AM
Inspired by this interview with Nora Roberts, wherein she talks about her writing process, I have a question for y’all: what does your first draft look like?
In the interview with Clarissa Sansone, Roberts says,
“I’ll vomit out the first draft: bare-bones, get-the-story-down. I don’t edit and fiddle as I go, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Once I get the discovery draft down, then I’ll go back to page one, chapter one, and then I start worrying about how it sounds, where I’ve made mistakes, where I’ve gone right, what else I have to add, where’s the texture, where’s the emotion. I start fixing. And then, after I’ve done that all the way through again, I’ll go back one more time, and that’s when I’m really going to worry about the language.”
I’m so curious about what that bare-bones draft looks like and how it reads.
I don’t personally examine my own writing process closely because I don’t want to scare it or make it feel shy. But usually when I have an idea for an entry or an essay or whatever it is I’m writing, I open the nearest text editor and type whatever words are bubbling up in my brain. Sometimes that email from my Blackberry, or the text editor on my computer, but generally if I’ve had an idea for something, I have to write it down or it is gone, gone, gone. And if I’m not specific enough, I leave notes for myself that are mystifying. I have one that says, “Grate sidewalk sinktrap.” I can only assume I was about to write something really squicky, since there are few things more eeeeeyew-worthy in my world than the sink trap. I get the shivers just thinking about touching it.
Sometimes an entry of a few hundred words is born out of a note that consisted of five or six. Sometimes I can find a review in a two-word note in a margin (if I can read my handwriting). Sometimes I type out something in nonsensical order and then read later and wonder what I was smoking. But because this is a blog, unpublished entries don’t get better by sitting. They get stale. So my first draft is often one of only two, maybe the only one before I try to find any typos.
I’m sure this is relentlessly boring for you, but I’m meanwhile very curious about your drafting process, what your first draft looks like. Do you start at the beginning and seat-of-your-pants to the end? Do you outline and then draft? Do you ramble on and find the one good part and use that? Does it vary every time? How does it work for you?
I’ve talked with other writers who say it’s important to give yourself permission to do a SFD (shitty first draft), otherwise you can get hung up in the first three chapters and never finish the novel.
My first draft is full of brackets that say things like [describe dress], [dinner menu], [CK DATE] and so on, allowing me to move on with the story. Then I come back and fill in the blanks.
I’m not an outliner, I am, to borrow Ms. Roberts’ elegant phrase, “an organic writer”. So if I have a scene pop into my head I write it down, and either wedge it in where it belongs or I put it in a “Chunks” file to work in later.
Every writer has a different method, but this works for me.
I’m currently learning to transition from “seat of the pants” to “must sell on proposal” which is a horrible thing to try and *force*.
By nature I’m an organic writer, the story happens as I write it. Being forced to plot it all out for a synopsis = death of the inspiration to write it at all. This is not a good thing. So I’m struggling to find a middle ground that will both allow me to produce a proposal and then write the book (lots of people tell me that the book doesn’t have to match the proposal, but the whole process is a giant inspiration suck for me).
Because of the way I write, my first draft is fairly close to the finished product. I may go back and add bits here and there to clarify, deepen, enhance, etc. (usually after one of my friends gives the thing a first read), but the book is pretty much done when I type *the end*.
Because of the way I write, my first draft is fairly close to the finished product. I may go back and add bits here and there to clarify, deepen, enhance, etc. (usually after one of my friends gives the thing a first read), but the book is pretty much done when I type *the end*.
This is me.
I get the high points of a plot in my mind, then lots of little textural details pop into my brain but mostly I make up it up as I go along. It takes me longer to get to the end in the first go, but less time to edit after the fact so I think it even out in the end.
I’d kind of like to try it the other way, with the SFD, but so far I haven’t been able to do it.
lucinda betts said on...First Page of First Draft of November Release, RUNNING WILD
“Princess Shiraz?” a voice asked from behind her, and despite the desert’s morning heat beating down on the silk canopy, the words sent chills through her.
The voice wasn’t feminine—it was masculine, and no man was permitted within her canopy. Certainly, no man was permitted to speak to her, none save her father and brothers.
And this voice, flat and eerily cold, did not belong to a relative.
Shiraz ignored the speaker. Refusing to look at him, she watched the chanting klerin instead. She would not enter her marriage—regardless of how unwanted it was—with her name smirched by some stranger sneaking up behind her on the first day of her wedding ceremony.
“Princess Shiraz?” he said again, and the way his mouth slid over her name somehow reminded her of a snake. No one was to move, much less speak, during this ceremony. The voice belonged to a slithering predator.
Ignoring her pounding heart, she kept her attention focused on the spectacle unfolding before her. Her husband-to-be, the Raj ir Adham, draped in gold cloth with ruby embroidery, stood
First Page of Final Draft of November Release, RUNNING WILD
Silence smothered the dunes as the officiating klerin held up his arms, his black sleeves rippling in the hot breeze. “We will begin,” he said deliberately when all eyes were upon him. “We will greet the morning sun to initiate the marriage ceremony, joining the lands of the Sultan and the Raj through the beds of Raj ir Adham and Princess Shahrazad.”
Shahrazad stifled a shiver. Haniyyah should have been wedding the Raj, but instead her head stared at Shahrazad from the Pike Wall, once lustrous skin now waxy and pale. Talking to the soldier had been enough to negate the engagement, but touching him… What had possessed Haniyyah to touch a man? Shahrazad would never do such a thing.
“Please, begin,” the Sultan commanded the klerin from the opposite dune. “The sun awaits your salutation.”
The klerin nodded, closed his hands together over his heart, then turned toward the sunrise. As the klerin‘s salutation flowed from one asana to another, he took the warrior’s stance, the same one he used to behead her foolish cousin. God hold her in his eyes, she would miss her.
The hot sand burned through the soles of her slippers, but Shahrazad didn’t move. She didn’t lift her eyes. She had never spoken to an unrelated man. And by God’s eyes, she never would touch one. Ever.
“Princess Shahrazad?” a man’s voice asked from several steps behind her. She jumped, and the tiny golden bells on her wedding veil jangled in the desert’s morning heat. The klerin glared at her interruption.
I always thought of myself as an organic writer, and then I realized I do a little plotting one way or another. One liners for chapters in a notebook or notecards, or sticky notes--but without going into any detail.
I write a solid ms from the beginning and keep going. I write a chapter, my incredible crit partner critiques it, I make the changes but I’ve already been moving on to the next chapter. I make notes to myself in comment bubbles in Word to go back and foreshadow certain things. I don’t stop to go back and work it in while I’m writing. I keep going. When I reach “The End” I go through all my comment bubbles and fix what needs to be fixed, send to my main crit partner and fix what she finds, then read through it one more time before sending it to my editor.
I have the world’s best and toughest editor, Monique at St. Martin’s. She has a way of finding things that can be drawn out and enriched that I didn’t see. I usually get a few pages of revisions--we won’t talk about the most recent book that’s the first in a new series. Even though it’s a suspense series, I’m building a new world. I can bang my head against my desk on the work that needs to be done on that one. Once I establish my world, though, my revisions are not as bad. She just has an incredible eye for things that make a book stronger.
So that’s my process. For drafts I have the one I initially write; the one I go back through and insert stuff from the comment bubbles that I then send to my crit partner to read through; the one I read through before my editor sees it. Before she gives me more work--*usually* one revision that ends up being the final ms before copyedits.
I never stop when I’m writing to go back and re-read. I think that’s so important for new writers to know and do. Write the damn book and keep going until you hit “The End.” You can’t fix something you haven’t written.
And you’ll never get chapter one perfect, so move on!
CT said on...I am an outliner. I have to have things plotted out. I’ll highlight something that needs to be fleshed out in that awesome Microsoft highlighting tool. Some points may have dialogue, and not much more. Some explain how a character feels about some event. These notes in my outline may not make the final draft, but they’re good background.
And each point on the outline is numbered, so if there is a scene I have to write RIGHT NOW, I do. I just save it as a doc with the title corresponding to the number on the outline. Then I can make sure it still fits, and then plug it in where it belongs.
I think this all comes from me being an editor first, writer second. I have an inability to know WHEN TO STOP FIDDLING. That’s why the outline is great for me. I can fiddle away by cutting and pasting plot points around. Eventually they all end up where they were originally and I kick myself for acting like an editor again, but it makes me feel like everything is finalized before I even start. Which it isn’t.
Really, I think outlining is just me tricking my poor, paranoid brain that everything really is going to be okay.
As an unpublished writer, I’m not sure my method really counts. Here goes anyway.
Some stories come out in detail with the themes busting the reader over the head. I must say something ad nauseum to remind myself in later drafts to make it more subtle.
Yet, I now have two stories that I slapped out in true bare bones with requests for more description in italics (instead of brackets because I can’t find the keys reliably). With those stories I have a “Scenes” file for additions I want to place in the larger story. It does help me get the stories out of my head faster so that I can move on to the next one.
I hope this will mean that when I get the first story published that I’ll a nice packet of stories ready for prime time.
LizC said on...While I don’t write fiction whenever I had to write essays or research papers I notoriously hated doing first or rough drafts so I’d write one draft but I’d edit as I went. And I wrote very linear so it was intro, 1st paragraph, 2nd paragraph . . . conclusion. No jumping around.
When I was writing my thesis I couldn’t do that. I had to accept that it didn’t, nor could it be, perfect on the first try. So I just sat down and wrote whatever came to mind. Sometimes that was stuff that ended up in the third chapter, sometimes it was stuff for the intro, and sometimes it was stuff that didn’t make it in the final cut. I also would often write it out longhand and then type up something later and cleaned it up during that process so my thesis actually went through few major revisions (talk about how shocked I was when I gave my 3rd chapter to my advisor, the first time he’d seen it, and he gave it back to me with no chances. I thought he’d forgotten to mark it up).
Also, my thesis-writing process was similar to what Darlene described. If I couldn’t think of something or I couldn’t find the information I wanted even though I knew I had it somewhere (my notes could often get cryptic even when I thought at the time I was being specific enough) I’d leave notes in brackets and in color so I’d know I needed more info.
Count me in the “no draft” category. I typically spend a couple days thinking over a scene, what I want to accomplish, whose POV it should be in, how I can make it funny, etc. Then I write it, and what I end up with is pretty close to my final. I’ll print, edit, reread over a day or two before I move on to the next scene, but once I do move on, what I’ve left behind is pretty much what my editor will see.
I’m with Kalen in that the sell-on-proposal process pretty much ruined my pantsting. But the trade-off is that, at least with my last two books, my editor accepted it without revisions. A major bonus for someone like me who has the attention span of a gnat.
I find this fashunating also, especially from a rhet/comp perspective. (A very small part of me still wants to write articles on college composition for NCTE or CCC. A very, very, very small part.)
I outline first and make sure all my plot points are there. They may change as I write, but I have to start with something or I will feel lost (unlike Kalen). So the synopsis for selling on proposal isn’t much of a problem.
Then I write, but NOT in order. My process at this point sounds a lot like Darlene’s, with [brackets] and chunks out of order. For the book I’m working on now, I started with chapter 10, and at about a third of my word count, I’ve now written at least a little of every chapter. As I fill in these chapters, plot points in other chapters will change. I won’t really know what I was trying to say in chapter 1 until I’ve written the whole book. So writing the first three chapters (and nothing else) for selling on proposal is a HUGE problem, which may be why I’ve never sold on proposal.
In contrast, my CP starts on page 1, chapter 1, and writes through the book, in order, until she is done. The first draft is pretty much perfect. She makes very few revisions (I tell her to make a few but she ignores me--when you read the monkey joke in her Jan 2009 release, remember I told her to take it out). That means at any point she can send me chunks of the books she’s writing, in order.
I thought I needed to be able to do this too--quite a few other people on RWA listserves seemed to write this way--so I decided there was something wrong with my process, and I tried to write a book in order. Disaster. Now I have learned to let go and embrace the chaos. I haven’t had a nervous breakdown in, oh, three books or so.
I used to think I was a pantser, but realized that I’m probably more of an amalgam of both processes. I usually start by writing what I call ‘the bones.’ This, in the hands of a more organized or disciplined writer might be a synopsis, for me it’s the very bare bones of the story. It’s usually totally ungrammatical, choppy sentences that gives the main ideas that I have about the story. Main characters, beginning middle and the end.
Oddly enough, I usually know how the story is going to end, it’s the beginning and the middle (which I call ‘the grind’) that gets me in trouble. I actually wrote Rock Star from the ending working backwards for the most part. (I in no way endorse this writing method. It will drive you nuts!) I was afraid when I started Try A Little Tenderness that I wouldn’t be able to write sequentially, but it worked out fine.
Once I’ve got the bones down, then I start writing. Unlike some of the other posters, I do review and edit the previous day’s writing because that gets the juices flowing for me. The sad thing is, I do some of my best plotting and characterization in the shower. The day someone invents a water-proof computer I may spend all my writing time under water. It’s so bad that when I’m really stuck I’ll usually go take a shower. It works every time. Of course, if I’m not really focused enough to write it down when I get out, it disappears into the ether.
As an unpublished writer, I’m not sure my method really counts. Here goes anyway.
Sarabeth, your method completely counts. I’m pretty sure everyone who sold their first book wrote it as an unpublished author.
Fun topic! I love hearing how different writers approach this.
I’m an outliner. When I’m brainstorming a book, I write ideas for scenes, plot revelations, etc… down on index cards and lay them out on my dining room table or living room floor. That way I can move things around, play with when a crucial bit of information will be revealed or a major confrontation will take place, see where the hole are getting from one plot point to another. Eventually that gives me my outline, and I can see the arc of the book, with major plot turning points identified.
When I write a first draft, I remember the motto my mom had taped to her typewriter--"Don’t get it right, just get it written.” :-). I write my scenes in layers. I’ll do a first pass where I just get down everything I can think of-usually dialogue, with some fragments of action and description. Then I’ll go back over the scene several times, shaping it, adding actions and thoughts. I still end up with lots of **** where I need to track down a bit of research or can’t figure out how to get someone from the table to door (the sort of trivial action that could hang me up for hours before I started doing the ****). Once I have a complete draft, I do at least two revisions--one for the big picture--where scenes need to be added, emotion needs to be heightened, pace needs to be tightened. Then I’ll do one where I’m polishing and tweaking. And that’s before it goes to my editor :-).
Suze said on...Depends on what I’m writing, but they all start off with vomiting.
Procedures: get the steps down in order, and go through with an empty mind to look for assumptions and leaps in logic, over and over again until it works.
Poems: must be hand-written. Get the words down. Rearrange them. Add some stuff for clarity, refine the words, remove some stuff for clarity. Rearrange for flow and effect. Read aloud a few times. Put it away for awhile. Re-write.
Fiction: barf out scenes as they come (using Scrivener, I can easily rearrange the scenes later), inserting instructions in angle brackets to fill in pieces or research something.
Essays (for various English classes): write a skeleton of points to be made, flesh out and provide support from the texts, look up references and add them in, check word count constantly to see if I’m anywhere near done.
I’m currently struggling with overwhelm and perfectionism on my novel, and my first draft consists of about 10 pages of looseleaf with scribbles all over them. I’m stymied because I’ve read a few too many “how to write” books lately (looking for the magic answer, because I KNOW there’s one out there), and they all require me to outline, and I don’t WANNA! So I’m rebelling like a 13-year old, like that’s going to get me anywhere.
Upshot: first draft = ugly, which no human eyes should see.
I’m a plotter, no doubt about it. Though my characters tend to surprise me and move the story in different directions when I actually write.
The actual first draft is very bare bones - lots of dialogue, bits and pieces of description and square brackets round things I need to research or round words that aren’t quite right, but if I stop the flow to figure out exactly the one I need, I get distracted *g*.
I then go through and fill in description etc and research the nitty gritty stuff.
I’m extremely lucky to have risen up out of the dust with the organic writing process I have. My first draft is *pretty much* my final draft even though I write from the seat of my pants. I wouldn’t be a writer otherwise, because I have the attention span of a gnat. If I had to outline or labor through four or five drafts, I’d probably walk away from it, and I am NOT proud to say that.
I was the same in college. All my best work was done the night before the due date. Any papers I tried to start a few weeks before were utter crap… and always abandoned within two or three days.
I’m a bit more all over the place. I write like you might catch a movie on TV, but can never watch the whole thing in one sitting. You might catch 10minutes out of the middle, the next day you’ll see the end, two days later a part near the beginning, and so forth. I do this for several days until I have about 30-50 pages of nothing but dialouges of scenes. THEN I go back through, start connecting scenes together and filling in the inner conflicts and everything else. Once I get those scenes straightened out and in order and cleaned up, I restart the process and beginning seeing more parts of the dialouge through the story. By the time I’m at THE END, my manuscripts fairly clean and just needs to be read for typo’s.
I ALWAYS write the first scene first, but I know nothing about my characters or the storyline. For instance, in my WIP, I wanted my heroine to slip a note in the hero’s shirt pocket with information about the man he was talking to. I knew nothing about what the note said or anthing, just that I wanted to do that.
By the time the first 50 pages are cleaned, I know pretty much all that’s going to take place, somewhat.
Then I write, but NOT in order. My process at this point sounds a lot like Darlene’s, with [brackets] and chunks out of order. For the book I’m working on now, I started with chapter 10, and at about a third of my word count, I’ve now written at least a little of every chapter.
OMG, I lose my mind (and there would be lots of vomiting). It’s so interesting how everyone has their own “way” of working. One of my best friends pretty much has the whole story in her head when she sits down to write and she can just spill it forth in a torrent (or she could if she could touch type, LOL!). Others have in-depth plotting techniques that involve mysterious rituals with sticky notes and high lighters (and at some point I’m pretty sure wine and the sacrificing of animal crackers comes into it). I just mull it over and over and over and over (I keep a copy of my POS synopis in my purse for jotting down bits as they come to me, cause it’s always at the worst possible moment that something brilliant occurs to you and if you don’t write it down it’ll disappear like fog on a July morning).
And I write the opening chapter like eight times . . . I HAVE to have the opening down SOLID before I can write anything else.
I’m pretty seat-of-my-pants. I’ll frequently start something with no idea how I’m going to end it. Most of the time this works out pretty well, but not always. Lots of times I’ll have scenes in my head that I want to incorporate in the story, and I usually stick them in my little notepad and cross them off as I do them.
I’ll generally go over the last section I wrote before starting a new one, if it’s been more than a few hours. This grounds me in place and helps me figure out what should be next.
Once it has an END at the bottom, I go back in and start revising. Most of the time, my last draft looks a lot like the first, just more detailed. Of course, in the current WIP, that’s gone out the window because suddenly three revisions later one of my characters is a werewolf (don’t ask), but really, it’s a matter of tweaking and adding stuff, even for such a drastic change--so it still looks a lot like the original. The characters are still there, doing their thing, but a couple of things have changed somewhat drastically and I’m having a ball with it.
I’m currently learning to transition from “seat of the pants” to “must sell on proposal” which is a horrible thing to try and *force*. By nature I’m an organic writer, the story happens as I write it. Being forced to plot it all out for a synopsis = death of the inspiration to write it at all.
Oh, Kalen--I was in the same position this spring. Sucked the life out of my creative process. A synopsis? And now I have to write the whole thing but with dialogue? But… it’s done! Right here! In the synopsis!!
I’m a mental plotter with a general idea of where to go, and I keep a list of “plot fodder"--random ideas and events I’d like to integrate eventually. Then I just start writing and let it run. I write UGLY first drafts. One big sin is my tendency to resolve conflict and try to make the h/h happy too soon. But then maybe a character gets boring--so I stop writing him/her. Revisions will always make it better, but only after the initial SFD is out of the way.
For more detailed info on my editing process, see the three recent posts I did at my agent’s blog.
I have to write a synopsis to sell the book, so there is a storyline there that I work from. Then I tend to deviate from it when I write the actual story, because I don’t really know the characters all that well until I start writing the book.
I don’t edit my first draft at all. I might go back and add something in an earlier chapter if something new or different happens in a later chapter, but I save all the major editing for the second draft. So if I completely change the story by the end of the book, I’ll fix the beginning chapters during the editing phase, because by then I know how the book ends.
I use to be an edit-as-you-go writer. I found it took me freakin forever to write the book. Now I just write the book first draft, then go back and make it pretty. You really can spend way too much time editing if you do it while you’re writing the book.
Some of my first drafts are total shit. Of course I think all my books are total shit when I’m writing them. Sometimes I’m right. Sometimes they’re not as bad as I thought they were, and they don’t require as much editing and restructuring as I anticipated. Of course it could be I can’t see the forest for the trees, too. Heh.
I’m so curious about what that bare-bones draft looks like and how it reads.
Not sure if you are curious about Nora’s specifically, Sarah, but mine are awful. Just awful. The first draft is where I have my heroine sitting around thinking about her past for like three pages, because I’m telling myself the story as I’m writing. Where I have clunky dialogue and run-on sentences. And word repetition - my personal bugaboo. “He sighed impatiently.” “She looked at him impatiently.” “He swore impatiently.”
There is nothing more painful than reading a first draft of mine. I think it’s actually Nora who termed hers “POS” for piece of shit? I go back and read mine and hang my head in shame and decide I should never write another word as long as I live. Then I start fixing.
Oh, hey Jenn! What was that about you not having had a nervous breakdown in the past year?
Look, here’s another monkey joke just for you!!!
And I write the opening chapter like eight times . . . I HAVE to have the opening down SOLID before I can write anything else.
I’m the same way. I feel like that first chapter is akin to launching a missile (fallic reference intended). Point it in the wrong direction and the whole book goes off course.
Tina C. said on...The vast majority of my writing has been research papers. With those, I mull over everything I’ve read and studied regarding the topic for a couple of days. I’ll often write down sentences or paragraphs by hand when I think of something I really like and don’t want to forget. After anywhere from 2 - 4 days, I’ll gather all of my research material around me, stacked in more or less the order that I think I’ll need them. Then I begin typing. I might redo that initial paragraph 5 or 6 times before I’m happy with it, but once I get going, I simply don’t stop unless I’m really having a hard time getting the paper to go in a cohesive manner. In that case, I’ll stop, jot down a rough outline, and start again with my thoughts appropriately marshaled. I’ve spent as much as 26-30 hours straight because I want to get to the end. At that point, I’ll stop and leave it for at least 24 hours. With a day or two behind me, I can proof it properly for grammar, voice, and overall cohesion.
With what fiction I’ve written, I already know how the story ends. Consequently, I tend to jot out the points that get to that ending in what is again an extremely rough outline. Only once have I had the character I was writing completely up-end my conclusion--she flat-out refused to go along with my intentions, no matter what, so I gave her her way. (Guess that sounds a bit schizo, but there you go.)
The sad thing is, I do some of my best plotting and characterization in the shower. The day someone invents a water-proof computer I may spend all my writing time under water. It’s so bad that when I’m really stuck I’ll usually go take a shower. It works every time. Of course, if I’m not really focused enough to write it down when I get out, it disappears into the ether.
Oh, man, I feel ya! What is it about bathrooms? I once was in a class that required us to do a presentation at the end of the term, and I was scheduled to go last. During a bathroom break in the middle of the class I had an epiphany and re-focused my entire presentation, which turned out to be much better. Fortunately the visual aids I’d prepared still applied, I had my pen and a notebook with me in the cubicle, and MOST fortunately the only thing I had to hand in was my list of references.
How about a water-proof voice recorder? Does anybody make those?
Vicki. Oh good. For a minute there I thought you weren’t going to claim me OR your monkey joke.
And I didn’t say I hadn’t had a nervous breakdown in the past year. I said I haven’t had one caused by my writing process. Other reasons don’t count (has anyone here besides me tried to learn to play Pokemon with their children? OMG).
corrine said on...I am a relentless perfectionist and self-editor. I always start my writing by going back and re-reading the last few paragraphs I left off with, fix anything that needs fixing, and then continue on my writing, so my first draft is pretty much the final draft, though I do a final read through (and usually wind up rewriting the whole thing).
Until recently I never did anything by hand, but I’m starting to keeps notebooks on character histories, personalities, timelines, outlines, etc. All in all, it’s been very helpful, especially since I’m writing book one of what I intend to be a five-book series. I would love to be able to just put it all down in writing, even non-linear writing, but I’m a little too anal retentive for that (you know that line in Ferris Bueller about a wad of coal… yeah, that’s so me). Which may be why it’s taken my five years, three subgenres, and four rewritten complete manuscripts to get so far into my novel --- a whole twenty pages into a series that I’m really passionate about.
Kathleen O'Reilly said on...I would love to be a plotter. That is my life-goal, along with having a cleaning lady. I get the big stuff usually, but the little minor subplots always surprise me, which can be a good and a bad thing.
My drafts usually come out OK, I write by sound, so if it doesn’t sound right, it won’t go down on the paper. But it takes a day to get a scene the way I want it. I do about three to four drafts total, two for me and my CP’s, and one, (sometimes two if she’s really getting cranky) for my ed. I have those fill in the blank things as well. XX marks the spot where more work is required. It’s rather freeing writing that, gives me permission to move forward.
I will confess that my synopses are a work of fiction.
Wendy said on...*been lurking for a while...’cause y’all are so brilliant and fun that I was a bit shy, but I love talking writing bits and ends. Thus, I shall step into the light.
I think I’m equal parts “organic” and “outliner.” I, like Ms. Marshall, pepper my drafts with brackets containing descriptions and names to be added later. I write major scene to major scene and also tend to spew out mountains of dialogue before really feathering in the details.
Once all that business is in place, the outlining part of me takes a turn. I take post-its, scribble down my major scenes, line them all up, and slap blank ones in where I need filler (most of the time with notes about what manner of filler is needed). It helps me take a step back from the organized chaos of the first draft. This method also allows me to move things around if, suddenly, the timeline is off or I realize something would have more impact earlier or later than it currently sits.
Whoa, I sound very gathered and professional up there...not so fast. I’m still working really hard at not going back to nit-pick myself stupid after every 2000 words. The result of this can only be instant jam-up and resurfacing of my Enemy of Ages Past: Perfectionism. (Get thou back, vile Beast of the Abyss!)
This being said, I try to keep it to three phases of drafting similar to those mentioned in the Nora Roberts interview: bare bones, filling, fine tuning.
All this being said, I’ve got nothing published, so I’ve got nothing breathing down my neck. Who knows what differences that might make.
My two cents.
Showers and long drives and long walks with the dog at the shore. These are a few of my favorite things . . . un, no, these are a few of the places where I have enough quiet time to work out plot points.
White board and marker high in shower above the water line.
Voice recorder for iPod for use in car.
Small notebook in pocket for walks.
Oh, and pad of paper next to bed, cause the best ideas always come to you in the middle of the night and you NEVER remember when you wake up again (or I don’t, I just remember that I had a brilliant solution to plot problem X, but what is was is gone gone gone).
I’m still working really hard at not going back to nit-pick myself stupid after every 2000 words.
Hell, I’m still nitpicking my thesis that I turned in a year ago and got an A on. This is because I can’t find my final copy and I keep finding mistakes in the copy I do have that I really hope didn’t make it into the final because boy are they stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, I can’t access the final copy the library has to set my mind at ease.
White board and marker high in shower above the water line.
Yes! I do this! It works wonderful! What usually comes to me in the shower is those one liner pitches. Bits of talking that I want to write in, a sudden revilation of inner conflict--THAT I can remember, but the precise wording of a pitch summing up the GMC of each character?? No way.
I was astonished last year at RWA during a Nora QnA to realize that we do it the same way. I do a bare bones draft, and go through it twice more before turning it in, just as she does. My first drafts will be 10-15K shy of their final length because I flesh it out after I get all the plot elements and dialog in place.
One of the best writing tools I have is the bulletin board that hangs next to my computer. I start by filling it with inspirational photos I’ve cut out of magazines or printed off the web. Maybe MapQuest maps of the city, detailed specs on a topic I researched, etc. Then as I go, I start adding little stickers of character names, streets, eye colors, business names, etc. Basically, anything where I used to have to go thumbing back through my MS to remember what I’d called it now gets a label on the board.
It grows as I write, and the funnest part is wiping the board clean when I’ve finished the book. It’s a little ritualistic and very much symbolizes clearing the slate for the next project.
Credit Alison Kent for giving me that idea. It’s something I now can’t write without.
I try to have a complete draft before I do any major editing, because it’s much, much easier for me to edit when there’s something to edit; when I can see the full picture. That said, I do some small edits along the way. Each evening when I sit down to write, before I begin I read a little bit of what I wrote previously, and sometimes clean it up a bit. It’s a ritual that focuses my mind.
Occcasionally, I’ll take a wrong direction in the draft, and have to cut a chunk of text. I save those chunks in another file, but rarely look at them again. Then I move on again, taking another path from that point onwards.
In my latest two novels, I’ve been under deadline, and so when I’m feeling stuck, I jump ahead and write another scene that happens later on. I may or may not connect it to previous scenes. If not, I have to go back later and add in transitions.
Once the draft is done, I like to give it a thorough read, have my workshop critique it if there’s time, and then make my edits. In an ideal world, I’d do another round of edits after that, but as it is now, I send it off to my editor and save up any editorial inspirations of my own for when revision time comes.
moira said on...I always write at least four drafts. And I usually spend at least a couple of months thinking about the book before I start to write it. From that thought I will usually have points A, F, Q and Z fixed in my head, with the other points to be filled in as I write.
I usually strive for complete descriptions and proper grammar - or as proper as I want it so be - in the first draft. Second draft is for severe overhauling, sometimes eliminating characters and plots I don’t like. Third is clean up and hopefully catching any inconsistencies. Fourth is final polish and catching all the typos.
And then, often, I leave it along for a while and do another polish. And sometimes the system breaks down and I need more drafts.
Lori said on...Like Tina C., the vast majority of my writing has been research papers and I have a similar process to hers. I do all my reading, then let the information stew for a while. Once I have an idea in my head of how I want the paper to go I start writing, more or less the vomit method. I try to get in all the references that I need to use & points that I want to make. Once that’s done I check word count and go back and do a major edit to get to more or less the required length. Then I try to leave it along for a while before coming back with fresh eyes to do the final edit.
This generally works very well for me & I wish that I could use the same process for fiction writing. Unfortunately, with fiction I tend to get one great scene that doesn’t attach to any larger story. It’s sad. I have really good middle chapters for about 5 books, not but a single complete story.
I’m a complete pantser. I have no idea what’s going to happen until I write it.
I write draft one. Then I go back and see where it needs work. Draft three I worry about mechanics.
Thank God for La Nora whose process is like mine. Now, if only I had an agent, a publisher, and a career like hers.
A woman can dream. Sigh.
Lucinda, thank you so much for that! It’s very encouraging for those who write a Shitty First Draft and think it’s a lost cause.
I write completely out of order. Whatever scene I’m working out in my head is one that goes down on paper. Sometimes it spawns another and sometimes it just doesn’t fit into the final story. I do outline, but if scenes don’t start running through my head once I get beyond a certain point then I know the world or premise need some shaking up. If I’m not interested, nobody else will be.
I’m a chronic perfectionist. I have to write and rewrite every chapter. I’ve been known to rewrite a chapter 22 times. So moving from one chapter to the next is painfully dragging process for me. :P
I can’t just “fly into the mist” by the seat of my pants. I get lost. But I can’t do a detailed outline either--and I HATE writing multiple drafts--though I do, sort of, since I’m one of those weird throwbacks who writes first drafts in longhand. (Need to type in a synopsis right now) That typing in is my 2nd draft. At that point, it’s usually pretty clean, but WAY too long, (since I don’t really know how long it Really is, since it’s on looseleaf notebook paper rather than the computer), so my next pass--which really isn’t a draft--is cutting the thing down to size and making sure the pieces that are left still flow together. And that’s it, unless the editor asks for revisions. I want to get all the pieces in there the first time through.
I think about a story a while before I start writing, and take notes. Mostly about the characters and the universe they live in, since I write fantasy. I have to figure out how the magic system works. And how the magic itself works. Then I figure out some plot points--nothing in too much detail, just the main turning points for the plot at least to the halfway point, and get started.
Usually, I don’t write the synopsis till I hit that third chapter. By then, I have a better idea of what those main points will be, and I need to figure out an ending so I can send a proposal in. I know, sort of, how it will end. (It’s fantasy. There’s going to be a big battle of some kind against the bad guys, and the hero and heroine will declare their love, because it’s romantic fantasy.) But I need to know in a tad more detail how it will end for the proposal. I need a rough, sketchy frame to hang my story on, and that 6-10 page proposal synopsis works pretty well for that.
I start at the beginning and write straight through to the end. If there’s a major adjustment I need to make in the plot/motivation, I’ll stop and go back and fix it right then, but lesser fixes and things I need to look up get noted on a separate sheet of paper and fixed/looked up when it’s typed in. Some things get written into the margins (mostly where I think the story’s supposed to go the next day). Most stuff gets written on those separate pages.
I’m a hybrid plotter-pantser (I’ve heard it called a linear writer) who doesn’t like too much detail, but needs a little organization to stay on track. The main thing for me is that I write in order, from beginning to end. And in longhand. With my plot points figured out early on, but not much more than that.
I have a technical question...all the responses were great until I got to the monkey joke (ha ha ha)
but then I “lost” the blue background. The background where the names are is red, as are the names, so I can’t see who is posting. The messages have a tan background with black font, so I can read those. This is new. This happening to anyone else?
Never mind. It seems to have mysteriously fixed itself.
Sigh. I hate computers sometimes!
Hell, I’m still nitpicking my thesis that I turned in a year ago and got an A on. This is because I can’t find my final copy and I keep finding mistakes in the copy I do have that I really hope didn’t make it into the final because boy are they stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, I can’t access the final copy the library has to set my mind at ease.
LOL. I refuse to read my doctoral dissertation that I published in 2001. I KNOW I’ll find something in it that needs to be fixed.
Unfortunately, us “pantsers” are at a distinct disadvantage when we’re in our “sophomore” stage. You have to finish the first book before you can start looking for agents and pitching to editors, so it really doesn’t matter what your process is/was, but after that you’re selling on proposal, and proposal = being a plotter. Eventually you may get back to a point where you can sell without a proposal (if you’re damn lucky), but that usually takes years and years and books and books.
Everyone says: Embrace your process. It’s your process. You write the way you write. There’s nothing you can do about it, it’s just the way your brain works.
I’m sorry, but this is Bullshit. And IMO it’s bad advice.
Embrace away if your process happens to be that of a plotter. But if you’re a pantser . . . learn to plot now. The sooner you figure out how to do this without strangling the inspiration muse in the process, the less traumatic it will be (trust me, taking this on “under the gun” as I’m doing sucks the white wonder out loud, as my mother would say).
[verification word: hell89]
it’s important to give yourself permission to do a SFD (shitty first draft), otherwise you can get hung up in the first three chapters and never finish the novel.
That. Was. Me.
Five years ago, the first time I decided to get off my ass and do this thing. Got absolutely wrapped up in writing and re-writing the first few chapters.
This time, I wrote the entire thing long hand, in notebooks, for fear of getting way too intimate with the delete key. But I finished this time. Working on first edits now, so I’ll let y’all know how many sets I go through later.
Must. Outline.
Without the outline, I would be in a world of shit. That isn’t to say I don’t make alterations as I go. Sometimes a plot or character element in theory doesn’t work as well in practice, so it gets changed. But if I didn’t know exactly what happened when, things would get ugly, very ugly. Or very, very boring.
Once the outline is done and I’ve finished my research (always research), I start writing pages. I give my husband three-chapter blocks for his notes (he’s also a writer), get his notes, revise the chapters, then plow ahead until I’m at the end of the book. Then he reads the whole thing all over again (I’m a lucky, lucky woman) and I revise once more.
I don’t think anyone believes there is a single process that works for all writers. That’s why we’re batshit crazy.
My first draft is also a “just get the words on paper” draft. I love Nanowrimo for this: there’s something about all that energy and the deadline, even if it is a personal one, that sets fire to my writing that I just can’t access the rest of the year. (Though I’ve found having a contract for a story, and thus a deadline, works in much the same way. Thank God for deadlines or I’d never get anything done!)
MaggieDR said on...The most common words I read or hear about writing are: “It’s different for every author.”
I saw a panel with 3 mystery writers last spring. Two of them outlined first, but both said they don’t adhere to the outline. The third said he wrote organically and enjoyed painting himself into a corner.
I hate feeling cornered, so I tend to outline, but have a hybrid method: write-outline-write--change outline--write some more--make a new outline--vow to finish first draft come hell or high water.
I majored in creative writing and journalism and my senior advisor asked me to turn in 25 pages of a new novel; I turned in 100. She was so fascinated with my creative process that she asked me to write my senior thesis on that instead.
I go back and look at what I wrote in that thesis, and while most of the elements are the same, I’ve started asking myself the “why” questions faster and more often.
I have a four-pronged method:
1. Scenes come to me like in a movie. I write them down. They’re out of order. They may or may not make the final cut, but I use them as mile markers for the story to get from point A to point Z.
2. I write a first draft that is about half the length of the novel and is nothing but telling. I tell everything, backstory, the rules of the world I’m building, everything.
3. I flesh out the telling into actual scenes, change the inconsistencies, correlate everything, incorporate the scenes from #1.
4. All the while through this, I’m writing extraneous scenes that explain things TO ME. I know these scenes will never go in the book, but they give me a texture to the tapestry I’m weaving so I get a sense of the depth of the story.
Then I revise, cut, edit, proofread like normal.
Embrace away if your process happens to be that of a plotter. But if you’re a pantser . . . learn to plot now. The sooner you figure out how to do this without strangling the inspiration muse in the process, the less traumatic it will be (trust me, taking this on “under the gun” as I’m doing sucks the white wonder out loud, as my mother would say).
That is so true. Balancing creativity with productivity is killer. If writing is your job, you have to be able to fulfill your obligations whether your muse is cooperating or not, so you lose the luxury of exploring your world at your own pace that you had when writing was a hobby. (keeping in mind that it’s still my hobby...)
Whether you like her books and opinions or not (I’d guess mostly not, from my meandering through the archives here), I have to say that Holly Lisle has some pretty good, well-organized advice about how to handle the merging of creativity with organization and production.
She has a swack of free how-to articles on her website, and has also self-published a swack of really useful how-to books for sale (create a plot, get to know your characters, create a language). I actually like her nonfiction better than her fiction.
White board and marker high in shower above the water line.
My husband is really, really going to hate this, but I’m on my way to Office Depot, RIGHT NOW!!!
I forgot to mention that I print out the previous day’s work and edit by hand. I absolutely cannot edit on the computer. I do a lot of writing in longhand. I probably wouldn’t do that if I had a laptop. I like to sit in the den with my husband while he’s watching tv. Sometimes it helps to talk to him when I’m trying to work things out. Interestingly enough, I’m a very fast and accurate typist, but I still have to grind it out in longhand. It just feels better. I hope to get a laptop soon. It’ll be interesting to see if this is still true.
Lori, thanks.
I do have an outline. I don’t stick to it. After I got the first story on the screen, I realized that writing a synopsis after the fact proved difficult. So, the next story, I wrote the synopsis first. If the story changes after editing, it should be a simple process to edit the synopsis. Well, I hope. As it stands, I have one complete manuscript, one WIP in ugly, no one can look at it first draft, and two stories in synopsis complete with back story so I know exactly who my characters are.
Roslyn, I do a lot of writing by hand, too. It helps me sift things out, forces me to go slower and detail things.
Deb Kinnard said on...Embrace away if your process happens to be that of a plotter. But if you’re a pantser . . . learn to plot now.
I tried this. It drove me bonkers. I figured, with 3 (at the time) books published, I should learn to write like the big girls.
It didn’t work for me. For 2+ years the Muse sulked in her corner & refused to come out & play. Then I said to myself, “Self--this is rubbish. Write your book, your way—barf it it you must, but for chocolate’s sake, WRITE SOMETHING!”
The need to write like a big girl? I let it go and am writing once more, happily not plotting except in my brain, certainly not outlining.
If something works for you, do it on purpose (thanks, Dolly Parton).
I usually start writing, stop about 1/3 through and outline the rest, then keep going. But this current WIP tossed all that out the window; I realized 30,000 words in that I’d made the protagonist too reactive instead of active, and too damn fearful of everything remotely nasty for me to really care about her. So...big-time rewrite. (This took me 6 weeks to figure out, by the way: I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell what.)
But now it’s all sorts of dark. And I’m not sure where it’s going. But I’m going to trust my Muse and keep on truckin’.
I’m more of a pantser but I edit as I go. I would love to be like Nora and not worry about making the first draft “perfect,” because I do end up changing stuff, throwing out scenes and paragraphs and lines I needlessly agonized over.
Man. I wish I could power out an awesome first draft without going back to reread, rethink, reorganize.
I also write myself notes I don’t understand later. “Sex window burglar.” What?! Obviously, my mind is not a steel trap.
Wow… my process is similar to Nora Roberts’s, though I’m an outliner. My first drafts are horrible. I know all the major turning points of my story before I start writing, but I don’t know exactly how to get from point A to point B to point C and so on. The first draft is where I figure all that out. I never edit or fiddle with the first draft, because often by the time I’ve finished the first draft, I’ve discovered that I need to rewrite the beginning or large swaths of the middle from scratch. Therefore, early editing is a waste of time.
Once I have my story figured out, I write a second draft, and that one is not allowed to suck. The second draft goes to critique partners. After feedback, I write a third draft and that goes to a separate set of critique partners. After I get their feedback, I do a final round of polish and I’m done.
The first draft takes me 3 months to write.
The second draft takes 9 months.
The third and fourth drafts take about 3 months total.
The most drastic changes are between the first and second drafts.
I tried this. It drove me bonkers. I figured, with 3 (at the time) books published, I should learn to write like the big girls . . . It didn’t work for me.”
So how do you pitch a book you want to sell? Do you write the whole thing and cross your fingers that you’ll be able to sell it when you’re done? I just don’t see any way around forcing my muse to become a plot goddess (and she’s sooo not happy with the change in her job description!).
White board and marker high in shower above the water line.
Oh dear god, yes! Yes!! It seems like I do all my good writing in my head while I’m in the shower, and then it all disappears as soon as I step out and face the “real” day. My only problem is that I’m 5’ so I’m invisioning having a stool in there too to reach the dry erase board. We’ll see how that pans out. I’ve frequently wondered, though, if there were such a thing as a water-proof dictaphone or somesuch.
I’ve got two novels in the works now, one in editing and one in progress. The completed novel I just sat down and wrote straight through until I was done, resulting in a 680+ page book that my editor immediately asked me to cut to size. Little did I know. But I can be long winded and wasn’t too surprised. I hadn’t planned it out at all, I wasn’t even sure how it would end until about twenty pages before the ending.
The WIP I actually took the time to write out a little 17 page synopsis before I started, learning from my 680+ page folly - I decided I needed something to keep me on track. Plus I know how the WIP will go and end, something I didn’t know about the first novel when I started it. I haven’t yet decided which way I like better. Having my own personal synopsis for my WIP is nice and it certainly helps me stay focused, though it doesn’t seem as fun as getting it all out there first. We’ll see.
One thing I know, regardless, is that my beginning will be reworked. Period. By the time I’m done with something, I always feel like I have to go back and make the beginning fit with the end. But I don’t often rework the beginning until I’m finished with the whole.
It’s been I while since I’ve posted but I had to jump in.
I was a pantser until I realized nothing ever got finished because I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel so every MS seemed like a never ending overwhelming project. Once I gave myself permission to outline, and then verve off of it if need be, I started to finish things.
Also a synopsis, I’ve found, is much easier to write before than after even if you have to edit it to match the changes in the story.
Each chapter gets edited about 4 times before it’s put away and then the whole thing gets one more work through all together.
Once I learned to high-level outline into a 3-5 page synopsis, the writing life did get much easier for me. I’ve had dozens of bright ideas that sounded good at the time, but once forced to really think them through from beginning, middle to end, they fall apart. I’d rather find that out in the synopsis stage than half way through the book. Granted, I might not be as good at identifying bright ideas vs crap ideas at the onset as other writers. So for me, that synopsis ends up saving me a lot of heartache.
I have had to revise them, but usually, it’s the other way around: I get to the middle of my book, get stuck, go back and read the synopsis to remind myself where I was supposed to be going with the thing.
And I, too, am curious to know how a published author gets to sell without at least a synopsis. I’ve gotten “blind” contracts before, but a bulk of my advance is contingent on a partial.
My only problem is that I’m 5’ so I’m invisioning having a stool in there too to reach the dry erase board.
Stick it up right outside the shower, or on the back wall opposite the showerhead (or put it right under the shower head where you normally hang the rack for holding shampoo). It’s all about finding a dry and accessible place in your shower (just where that spot is varies widely).
Wendy said on...Whee! Ain’t it great when you find out your not the only one?
Until today I never heard another writer say they write as I do: All over the place. If I had to write a story from beginning to end I would seize up like gears in a sandstorm.
For me I’ll often begin with chapter 5 perhaps, then move on to maybe chapter 8. Perhaps the ending pops into my head and I write that. That inspires me and I figure out what needs to be in chapters 1 and 2. Those later turn into chapter 6 and so on until the book is done. Generally I have no idea where the ride is going while I’m on it and that is completely exhilarating.
I Googled and the answer is yes, you can buy both waterproof cases for small voice recorders or actual waterproof recorders. The cases at least aren’t that expensive so for someone who gets her best ideas in the shower it’s probably worth it.
I’m shocked to find Nora’s process is the same as mine. I know so many authors (admittedly, very few of them writing anything other than fanfiction at the moment) who work chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, polishing each, and then never going back over that because they consider that finished. I need to know how the story ends before I can polish to that extent. The thing I’m working on at the moment is like holding a handful of spaghetti, and the only way I can force the characters into line is to focus on the plot. It’s not always like that, but it’s almost like I’m bargaining with them - hey, just let me know your story and then we can go back and work on your big set piece scenes.
I use highlight and font colouring to mark out problem areas, the text is full of notes like [STRAW THINGIE] because I don’t want to stop and find out what the hoojit is that horses eat hay out of, and [MORE] when I run out of motivation to write description, sex or action in a scene. This is something I’m always advising my husband to do with his scientific manuscripts because he becomes paralysed by not knowing the mot juste and will dither for hours over that instead of flogging down text. He never listens but....
Brilliant text which doesn’t belong in the story gets chucked into a ‘spare’ file (and never revisited because the text is never as brilliant as I thought it was) but that way I don’t feel like I’m murdering my darlings so much.
I go over and over until I think it’s smooth and then it goes out to a series of friends to read and comment on and edit, and will go out at least once more before it’s submitted. Then I have a nervous breakdown :)
Kalen, Lori, you are goddesses. I’m already imagining the difference in my life when I’ll be able to write in the shower. Oh, the world will change.
White board and marker high in shower above the water line.
I just realized this had the inclusion of ‘white board’. I jot directly on my shower walls. It wipes right off same as a board, though I suggest you testing a small spot before really getting after those notes!
My only problem is that I’m 5’ so I’m invisioning having a stool in there too to reach the dry erase board.
I’m 5’3 at the most, so my shower head angles nearly straight down or it hits me in the face. Thus the entire upper back half of the shower remains dry. I’ve only scribbled a line or two, I don’t how the steam would cause it to run if I had a couple paragraphs worth. As for the hubby, well, I just tell him one day I’ll sell and I’ll buy you something and he’s pretty cool with whatever I do when it’s writing related.
Thank God for La Nora whose process is like mine. Now, if only I had an agent, a publisher, and a career like hers.
A woman can dream. Sigh.
Elyssa, I’m with you!
As for my style, I have the main characters and their looks and basic personalities set and some idea of how I’m going to get them from Point A to Point B. What happens in between is a mystery that gets answered as I write. I’ve had secondary characters completely hijack a story causing me to throw away the original concept and go with the flow. At the same time I was writing most bare bones, I also had a tendency to go back and edit as I reread previous chapters until I realized that I was getting wrapped around the axle doing so. (Why yes, I am anal, why do you ask?) Participating in National Novel Writing Month ( http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ) has gotten me over that so my first draft is much more like LaNora’s. The second and subsequent drafts are for mechanics and adding/deleting/fixing scenes, plot points, and continuity.
I tend to get brilliant ideas while I’m driving or a future plot point will occur to me while I’m hip dip in the current chapter. I have a wipe off/bulletin board hanging above my computer. I can sticky note or write notes to myself. In the car, I just keep talking to myself (much to the “amusement” of other drivers) until I can pull over and write myself a note. I keep a small spiral notebook in my shoulder bag for that very situation.
As for the shower...the shower is for plotting the sex scenes and if I can’t remember them long enough to get dried off and back to the computer, they aren’t steamy enough to keep.
I write like I plan a road trip.
I have my basic trip planned--how we start, some of our major stops, how we get home. But like a good trip, you take side roads, you meet interesting people, you buy trinkets--and many of my details come into play as I write from point A to point B. But not all of them.
I don’t write notes to myself, but I do obsess over things. I write in the shower too (although sometimes I find myself writing an interview between myself and John Stewart wherein I am fucking brilliant) and I write when I commute and when I’m walking or swimming and when I’m gazing sightlessly at the television, knitting, or...you know, whenever there’s a quiet space in my head. I do this partly so that when I sit down to the keyboard, I can make my time count, but I also do it because I tend to hash over scenes that I’ve written or ones that I’m going to write--description, did I describe what she was wearing? What does that room look like? Did I describe that room? Did I mention the part where he says this? Did I tie in that one part? Can I change that description so it’s symbolic? And then, when I’m going back over a scene, or starting from page one to ‘fill in’ some of the bare patches of my work, these ideas tend to filter back into the writing. What really surprises me is how often my final destination--the one that was plotted all along--tends to show up in the beginning, when I hadn’t remembered putting it there.
When I find places like that--where it seems like something took over my body and put in a symbolic description or a piece of writing I hadn’t planned and that I don’t feel smart enough to have come up with on my own but that resonates so strongly of that final destination, that’s when the writing process feels really spooky and almost divine.
I’m rambling here--that’s the one thing I look out for in my final drafts, too. When I find that I’ve had to cut something, I feel a true sense of satisfaction--that’s when my editing skills feel the strongest--because it seems like I’m eternally adding things, and I always wonder if I’m really that interesting. (Probably not--I am, after all, an indie.)
I tend to plan things out in my head, like a road trip. I know I’m going to stop here and here and here, but when all is said and done I MUST get from point A to point Z, and all stops in between have to mean something.
But all those stops--I linger at those--I describe, I play, I discover new characters, new places, new ideas. One of the scary things about these side trips, though, is how often they really are important stops to my final destination--I have no idea how this happens, but its usually a little spooky. Almost proof to me that creating is a link to the divine.
I obsess over what I’m writing--I write in the shower, on my commute, when I’m exercising, when I’m knitting--whenever I have quiet space in my head. Part of this is so when I sit down and write, I make my time count, and part of it tends to make sure that everything going down on the page is going to be part of one big, cohesive whole. (Sometimes, I write myself an interview with John Stewart in which I’m fucking brilliant, but, alas, no one has called to take me up on that...)
And other than that, I sit down, and write from A to Z without stopping. Then I go back and backfill and look for places when I was just bugfuckingnuts bonkers and cut out unnecessary words and add details that make things prettier and generally...comb through the snarls of the big drag queen wig that is my first draft.
When everything has the basic shape of what I want, I send it to a reader, who will help me catch the nits that first comb through missed.
And then I send the next version to another reader.
And then I edit and send it to another reader.
And then I hates it because I’ve read it six to ten times.
And THAT’S when I send it to the indifferent publishing company, before I hates it so much it will never see daylight.
I just remembered something else for shower thinkers----Crayola makes markers specifically for drawing in the bathtub. They wash right off the walls, but if you use them on a dry spot you could keep your notes long enough to transfer the thought to paper or computer.
My drafting is a work in progress.
I’ve discovered I need to outline novels, at least to the extent of figuring out roughly what happens in each chapter. And I need to rigidly limit sex scenes or the story dissolves about 2/3s of the way through into an orgy.
We work out the basic stuff through role-playing in chat. Sometimes, it’s all chat. Sometimes, I’m writing prose, and Naomi is filling in her characters’ dialogue.
A sample from last night
Naomi (as Little John): About to ruin my night, aint she?
Angel: yep
N: *grumps*
A:say something
N: *takes a big gulp of beer* Haven’t seen you in a while. Finally get to sneak out of Nottingham prison?
A: “Haven’t seen you in a while,” Little John said after another drink of beer “Finally get to sneak out of Nottingham prison?”
“Aye, but I fear neither my lady nor your sweet minstrel is so fortunate.”
N:*sets his beer down* Will?
A: Little John set the empty pitcher down. “Will?”
David nodded. “He was caught delivering your master’s message to my lady. I do not doubt Nottingham will use him as bait.”
That’s the half-writing/half playing. We have the all playing, which develops the raw draft. And there are all-writing sessions as well. Tonight may be one.
For the most part, the book is where I want it to be when I write the last scene. We’ve worked all the bugs out in raw chat. Afterward, it’s a matter of going back, being ruthless with the sex scenes (I swear they multiply) and adding more plot-points where needed. Then it’s off to our editor, where we get a half-dozen revision trips through it, but the story is basically the same.
lilywhite said on...Since I haven’t yet completed a novel (*shame*), I can’t say what works, but this is what’s working for me right now:
I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo. Got my 50k words but didn’t actually finish the story. Put it away for far longer than I’m willing to admit.
When I came back to it, I took the draft I had, divided it roughly into chapters, made some fairly detailed notes about what to do in all the missing scenes. Then I started to write the second draft.
That draft got really bogged down when I realized my calendar was all wonky and I couldn’t remember when everything was happening in relation to everything else. Also, the cut-and-paste monster had resulted in things like my hero drinking at a bar at 10:00 a.m. (not a stellar quality for a love interest).
So I went out and got a great big piece of posterboard and a pad of different colored Post-its. I drew a giant calendar on the posterboard (my story takes place over 5 weeks, so it all fit), and wrote out stickies and put them in the appropriate calendar spots. One color for the romance storyline, a second color for a secondary storyline about work, and a third color for another secondary storyline about the heroine and her best friend.
As soon as I did that, everything took off. I just move the stickies around if I want to change my timeline; i.e. have a work-related incident come before a friend-related incident, or swap a couple of arguments around or whatever.
75k and counting. It might not get me through to the end but I’m confident that if it stops working I can find something else that will get me going.
Like a lot of you, I write drafts like Nora, although I don’t have quite the same outcome as she does. But I’m working on it. This summer, in between kids’ swim lessons, vet visits, and house renovations, I’m trying to crank out pages of the SFD for my newest work. I know where I need to go next with the thing and have some cool ideas on how it will end, but there’s no outline outside my brain. I figure it out as I go. The challenge with this is that, with the kids interrupting every ten minutes, I don’t write in large chunks of time, so I end up repeating myself a lot. But I refuse to go back and edit, although I will go back to add scenes if I think something’s missing. I’m going to soldier through till the end before I revise.
I’m amazed at all the different processes and in awe that some people’s first draft is close to their final. My mind just doesn’t work that way right now.
spam blocker: made29 - I made 29 drafts before I got to the final one.
07.11.08 at 09:00 AM |