(Writing Talk is a type of short-form article centered around conversations about various aspects of writing/authorship. These aren’t usually long reads, but I think it’s fun to jot down some of my thoughts about the writing process as someone who loves the art of it all.)
I sometimes feel that I have a bit of a bone to pick with people who give writing advice, or construct entire books entitled ‘How to Write Better‘, or something along those lines.
Now, I don’t have anything personally against these people. I’m sure they are nice people, whose hearts are in the right place. They have just, perhaps accidentally, stumbled into a bit of a paradox when it comes to giving advice about writing.
Some writing advice is universal, of course, and rather objective. Make sure the words that you write are spelled correctly. Make sure that there is a plot or character arc, and that your story isn’t just a series of things that happen. Make sure that your story is original and in your own voice, and that you’re not just copy/pasting chunks of other people’s work and stealing it. That would be illegal, so obviously it’s a correct and true piece of advice!
But aside from a very select few examples, there’s precious little advice that is genuinely objective when it comes to writing. Speaking as plainly as possible, there just isn’t really a wrong way to write a story. A story can absolutely end up of bad quality once it’s completed, or can have moments of poor writing, but this tends to come down to a mix of hindsight and a need for editing/revisions. When it comes to simply putting a pencil to paper, there really isn’t a lot that you can do wrong.
Emphasis on the you. After all, it’s your story, and only you will ever truly know how it’s supposed to be told. What right does someone else have to try and tell you the correct way to write, or how to write better?
Again, this is not an attack on people who give writing advice. Heck, some of these Writing Talk articles that I’ve done here on The Contrarian Corner are, in a way, me giving advice. But the thing is that the advice therein is 100% subjective. It’s all my own personal opinion, not something that can be backed up by facts. Maybe the advice works for you, and maybe it doesn’t work at all for someone else. Two people can read a book called ‘Everything You Need to Know to Write Like a Pro’, and one person can find it lifechanging while another finds it boring and unhelpful.
That’s because every single person in the world is their own unique type of storyteller, with their own unique quirks and processes. No two authors will ever be alike on an exact one-to-one level.
It’s the driving reason behind the idea that humanity will never run out of stories to tell. Because while, in a grand-view sort of perspective, every possible story that could be told has already been told, there are an infinite number of ways in which a story can be told, and that all comes down to the uniqueness of you and me. My version of a sci-fi novel would be wildly different from another author’s, let alone ten other authors, even if we all based our work off of the same initial prompt or set of ‘writing advice‘.
So in the spirit of that, I thought I’d detail my own writing process for when I work on novels. Maybe you’ll relate to a few of the steps in my process. Maybe you’ll think I’m an absolute wacko for how I do things. Guess what? That’s totally okay! Every author is unique, and handles things in their own unique ways.
MY PERSONAL WRITING PROCESS
My process starts with a Spark Scene, which I’ve discussed in an earlier Writing Talk article.
To summarize, what I call a “Spark Scene” is the moment where inspiration hits me for a new story idea. Usually, the idea is at least moderately influenced by whatever I happen to be doing in the moment where the Spark Scene occurs, like watching a movie or playing a video game. Of course, the end result of my story idea is usually drastically different from whatever entertainment medium I was consuming to generate the Spark Scene, but at the beginning, it often arises from a sort of amalgamation of ideas mixed with the core thought of “how would I have written this differently“.
From there, I let the Spark Scene gestate a bit in my brain for the next few days (though I’ll usually jot down some brief notes on my phone, just in case I end up being a bit forgetful). At that point, the best Spark Scenes have congealed into a vague idea of a story. Sometimes characters have names, sometimes locations have some visual details, but often it’s a messy collage of broad strokes that all branched off of that initial Spark Scene.
At that point, I’ll boot up my trusty companion, Google Docs. I might dislike a lot of the formatting stuff with Google Docs, and it’s built-in spelling/grammar checker is notoriously awful, but it’s hard to be the convenience of being able to work on a story on my computer, on my phone, and anywhere else in between with instant ease.
My writing process moves onto the next phase here, which is where I create a blank document and add four sections to it. Those sections are a spot for the title (or working title) of the novel idea, and then larger sections for Characters, Settings, and an overall Synopsis of the story. If it’s a fantasy or sci-fi novel that is heavier on the worldbuilding, I’ll also toss in a Worldbuilding section too into the document.
I will then fill out these sections, with varying degrees of detail depending on the type/genre of story, and also just how much thought I’ve put into it so far. For example, I’ve got a document in my Google Docs right now that is just called “Untitled Murder Mystery Novel”, and every single entry under the Character section just says “the house’s chef” or “the plucky detective”. But then I have other documents for story ideas where I’ve written entire paragraphs about each character, location, and story summary.
Usually, the more details I include during this “Notes Document” phase of my writing process, the more engaged with the overall story idea I am. I’ve always been someone who gets excited and passionate about things pretty easily, and find myself practically shaking with desire to pour that energy into an outlet. That’s the main reason I have such a vast quantity of highly-detailed and thought-out notes documents for story ideas in my Google Docs, even though there’s a high likelihood many of them may never become complete novels.
But hey, maybe they will be! It’s good to be optimistic about creative pursuits!
If a story idea is still firmly gripping me by this point in the process, I move onto the visualization stage next. Primarily, this takes the form of a uniquely-me sort of step. I boot up my copy of the video game Code Vein, and use it’s insanely-customizable and highly-detailed character creation system to create the actual characters from my story. I then snap screenshots of each character, and drop those screenshots into my story notes document. Not only are the character screenshots fun to share with friends and family, but I love being able to have those images beside me while writing to inform how I describe my characters once it gets to the time to start writing.
Speaking of writing, before any of that can begin, I move onto the “Outlining” phase.
There’s a lot of ballyhoo in certain creative writing circles about the merits of outlining. You can be a “Planner” or a “Pantser“, as some people say. For me, my brain can’t even fathom the idea of jumping into the novel writing process without a concrete outline of my entire story. I pour a lot of time and effort into my outlines, going through the novel chapter-by-chapter, and creating a bulleted list of the broad strokes of what will happen in each chapter…with emphasis on the word “broad“.
See, contrary to popular belief, an outline doesn’t have to be limiting. There’s a lot of freedom in the writing process even while being guided along. Just because I know how many chapters my story will have, and an overall idea of what will happen in each chapter, doesn’t mean I’m completely prevented from spontaneity. In fact, it’s almost the opposite!
An outline allows me to see where characters and plot beats will end up, but leaves the how and why vague enough to let my spur-of-the-moment inspiration run wild. For example, I’ll often jot something in my outline that says “In chapter 9, Frank and Sally talk about their marriage, and Sally storms off afterward“. That’s all I’ll put in. So when it comes time to actual write chapter 9, I have all the freedom in the world to decide how their conversation happens, why it turns sour, and what Frank says to make Sally angry enough to storm off. And those decisions end up informed by how Frank and Sally have taken shape in the previous eight chapters.
It’s not very difficult to plan out a story in a chapter-by-chapter outline, but until you’ve tried to write a novel for yourself, it can be hard to recognize the truth behind the sentiment that “a story’s characters can take on a life of their own“. Sometimes, the characters in a novel pull you in a way you never could’ve expected.
I have fond memories of an antagonist in one of my novels being irredeemably evil and corrupt when I wrote the outline, only to end up so sympathetic while I wrote them that their entire vibe changed in a natural, fun way. Not enough to alter the path set in my outline, but enough to totally shift the way the reader feels about them.
So, okay. The notes document has been perfected, every character has a fun little visualization image to go along with them, and the story has been outlined chapter-by-chapter. There’s only one real place to go next, right?
Because I create my novel outlines, the writing process tends to come pretty easily to me. With some music playing in the background to set the scene (usually a looped/extended video game soundtrack), I go off of the bullet points in my outline and get to work.
Motivation is sometimes an issue for me (okay, maybe more than just sometimes), and often my tricky for overcoming it is to force myself with every fiber of my being to just write a single sentence. Because, once I’ve done a single sentence, suddenly the next sentence isn’t too hard, and then completing the entire paragraph is also pretty easy. And now I might as well keep going with the scene, and then the one after that, and that…oh. It’s been over two hours and I’ve written a bunch of pages and made a ton of really excellent progress.
Another thing about my writing process is that I have to go in order while writing. My brain simply can’t compute the idea of jumping ahead in a story to tackle another scene, which I know some authors really enjoy doing. The chaos inherent in that threatens to fracture my psyche. No, for me, I have to go in order, chapter-by-chapter, following my outline. Honestly, sometimes the promise of a more exciting scene to come is what helps me get through a slower or trickier part of the novel.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, I leave enough vagueness in my outlines to allow for spur-of-the-moment flexibility. Alongside this, I’ve discussed on this blog my love of foreshadowing and Chekov’s Gun. Those techniques practically necessitate writing a novel in order, because you risk things going all sorts of wonky if you’re writing scenes out of order while also trying to set up different plot threads and narrative devices.
After an indeterminate amount of time, I type the words ‘The End‘, and my story has reached its end. This is also where we reach a point that is, perhaps, the single biggest differentiation between myself and other authors I know (online and in real life).
When I finish writing the first draft of my story…my novel is basically done.
Maybe it’s just some sort of unique quirk of mine, or a strength of my detailed outlining process, but the only second draft I do is a finished draft, which is just the first draft plus proofreading and some changes based on beta reader feedback. I know a lot of other authors who do draft after draft, and I’ve seen some forum threads online of authors who have draft counts that reach the double-digits. My brain can’t even begin to comprehend having that many drafts, and by extension, apparently having that rough of a first draft.
Please note that I mean no offense or criticism in this comments. I’m a mix of impressed and confused, more than anything. And I’m also not trying to say that my novels are leagues better than other people. In all likelihood, the person who does ten drafts to fine-tune their story has a better end product than my own books. It’s just a result of my personal style and writing process that the first version of each novel I write is near-about the finished version.
But I do make some changes to my first draft, as I said. Typically, what I’ll do is run the story through Microsoft Word’s proofreading checker (leagues better than the one in Google Docs), and I’ll make the edits and changes as needed while hoping Word doesn’t crash trying to proofread a novel in the multi-hundreds of pages.
After that, I send the story off to my beta readers. This tends to be my older brother, my sister, and my dad. Each of them will read through the story and provide some feedback, as well as invariably catch a few spelling and grammar errors that even Microsoft Word couldn’t. Lastly, I’ll give the story a thorough close-read myself, catching any remaining little errors, or a potential minor hiccup that needs addressed (one time I forgot to give a minor character a send-off until my sister pointed it out, so I tossed in a paragraph about them into the final chapter).
And thus, my story is complete! Mostly, anyway. What follows is using a creative software of my choice to design a front and back cover, and then utilizing an online service to get physical copies of my novel printed and delivered so that I can hand them out to friends and family.
It’s technically only tangentially related to my writing process, but I can’t undersell how amazingly motivating it is to write something while knowing that someone is waiting to read what I’ve written once it’s completed. The knowledge alone that I have friends and family to share my stories with has propelled me through so many moments of writer’s block and tricky plotting/outlining.
If you don’t have someone to read your work, I highly encourage you to find someone. It could even be an internet pal, or someone from an online writer’s group or something. Though, if possible, nothing beats handing over a story you wrote to someone you know personally.
And hey, speaking of you…what’s your writing style?
I’ve blathered on for long enough about my own personal writing style, so now it’s time for you to think about your own unique traits and quirks when it comes to writing! The more you embrace your own uniqueness, the better writer you’ll become!
Keep on writing, friends!
The Contrarian Corner 