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Apparently this works for me
It’s getting to the point that I’ve written (and finished) enough different things that I’m starting to have an idea of how my creative process seems to work. This is not how I thought my creative process worked. I’m not necessarily sure this is how I want it to work. Nevertheless, this seems to be the way it’s evolved. Basically, everything (original, i.e. non-fanfic) that I’ve finished in the last couple of years, except for the really short stuff, has gone like this:
- I have an idea. I am very excited about this idea. I bounce around a lot, scribble some notes, come up with characters, do basic world-building, and write some snippets of random scenes at random points throughout the story that have popped into my head. At this point, I have probably a vague idea of where it ends up, but only a vague one. I do this until I figure out where it starts, which might be at the very beginning of this process or after I’ve spent weeks or months noodling at it. Once I find the beginning in my head …
- I start writing. I will almost certainly write random scenes from later in the story, but mostly I write linearly these days. (It didn’t used to be that way, but nearly everything I manage to finish is written more-or-less linearly, plus a few key emotional scenes from later in the story.) When I get stuck I’ll put in something like [Mary finds out about Bob's infidelity] and then keep going, figuring I’ll come back to it later.
- As I progress, the ratio of bracketed scenes to fully written scenes starts to become … unfavorable. About this time, I’m probably starting to figure out that a) my ending is stupid/trite/badly-planned, and b) there are huge tracts of plot between here and there in which I haven’t a clue how things are going to happen, and c) I’m not sure what my character(s) emotional arc(s) are, which means their scenes with each other start to get weird, pointless, and circular.
- Somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through, I realize that the story is starting to peter out in a series of “character gets up, brushes their teeth, and then breakfast is described in excruciating detail” scenes, because I have no actual idea what on earth is happening with the plot. At the same time, however, I’m starting to figure out who the characters are and what their emotional lives are like. Unfortunately this means that the story is starting to bog down under the weight of internal inconsistencies, because I KEEP CHANGING STUFF and don’t usually bother going back to fix it earlier. So, for example, I might have decided that my character who used to want to be an artist actually works a great deal better as an aspiring scientist instead, so I make a vague mental note to go back and change all the earlier references to her sketchbooks into field notebooks and to “scientist” up her point of view, and then I carry on writing her as her new scientist self. Due to this sort of thing, somewhere around the halfway point, the story collapses into incoherent, inconsistent drivel. (Or so it feels.)
- At this point, I back off and let it sit for a while. Then I go back and go over what I’ve written already, and do the thing that rational writers do at the beginning (except I can’t do it at the beginning, because apparently I need to write half the story to figure out who these people are and what their world looks like). I write out detailed descriptions of my characters (including what they want and how they change over the course of the story); write out a detailed plot description of everything that has already happened in the story; and write out a detailed plot description of everything I want to happen later in the story. Usually going back over the earlier parts that I’ve written, combined with my newly formulated “who these people are and where they are going” character bios, is enough for me to figure out a proper ending. Usually, too, I shuffle things around quite a bit at this stage, moving around a lot of the stuff that I wrote in my earlier writing frenzy to be more tight and coherent, doing away with tooth-brushing scenes, etc. I’ve tried a bunch of different techniques for doing this part: writing things on color-coded index cards and/or post-it notes and shuffling them around; printing stuff out and making notes on it with different-colored markers or colored highlighters; opening a clean word-processing file and writing a plot outline into it from scratch; etc. I still don’t really have a consistent system, just whatever works for a given project (plus a whole lot of experimentation). Assuming that the story has “legs” (as opposed to actually being the incoherent drivel that it seemed like at the end of step 4), I usually end up with a pretty solid outline at this point. Or at least something that seems like a solid outline ’til I actually write it. (Battle plans, first contact with the enemy, etc …)
- I go back to the beginning, start a new numbered version of my draft, and rewrite everything I’ve already written, applying my changes. Scenes get moved around, characters and character relationships get revised, themes get made more explicit. (At this point my character notes, incidentally, sound like an After-School Special: “Mary craves love and family, but is fiercely independent and has to overcome her resistance to trusting other people in order to let Susan into her heart.” It HAS to be mallet-to-the-face explicit in my notes because I’m going to try to reveal it subtly on the actual page, but I need to know where I’m going with absolutely no ambiguity in order to get there.)
- Eventually I finish the revising and reach the point where I’m writing new stuff. And so I proceed, now with a better idea of where I’m going, hopefully all the way to the end. However …
- … Sometimes 4-7 are repeated multiple times until I end up with a completed draft.
It’s step 4 where things tend to stall out. In the past, nearly everything that I wrote stalled out at step 4 and never made it any farther. What’s given me the ability to finish things, over the last few years, is essentially a process of learning how to do step 5 (outline and determine character arc) and step 6 (revise). I have a bunch of different projects that are sitting around, stuck at step 4. Someday I hope to pick most of them back up, apply further steps, and turn them into actual novels or novellas.
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
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back to reading...
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The extras in the end were fascinating, too. Your characters feel so real, and it's great to see the development proces. Man, I feel downright inspired. (And kind of in love with Alaska, but the thought of six months of snow does put a damper on it.) I'm glad I ordered this book; I thought about reading it online but I can't really read comics on the computer and this was much better.
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And seriously - thank you. These characters are near and dear to my heart, and it really delights me that you liked spending time with them.