My Writing Process, in Review
Nov. 27th, 2016 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynOne of my Twitter friends, @AnaMardoll, did a poll for writers on "which part of the writing process is the worst":
I have a clear choice for this: editing. Definitely editing. At the end where I have to fix all the stuff I left notes for myself about fixing later. "I need to foreshadow this clever thing I thought of in chapter 15 somewhere in the first 7 chapters so that it actually looks clever." "I really should've come up with this historical timeline before I started writing but since I didn't, here it is now and I'd better make everything consistent." "Why do all three of these major characters sound exactly the same? I need to make them distinctive somehow." Etc.
Also, I don't have a good way to measure progress when I'm editing. I'm always jumping around in my manuscript looking for places to add foreshadowing or other details. Even when I'm reading through sequentially to edit for things like "make voices distinct" or "fix minor continuity errors", I usually can't hold the whole list of issues-I-need-to-look-for in my head at once, so I wind up making multiple complete passes. Editing just goes on and on until I give up. Writing is better because I can watch the book grow and see how far I've come. And once I have the thing written, I can read it, which is arguably the thing I want most out of writing. The edited version is important for readers-who-are-not-me, so that the book makes sense, but it doesn't make nearly as much difference to me.
I often wonder if the folks who prefer editing have a different process for "getting to the editing stage". Do they never come up with cool new things to add in the middle that effect the beginning? Or do they go back and add the stuff to the beginning right away, before they continue on? Is this a feature of good planning at the start? Is there a connection with experience? Because I used to hate writing a lot more than editing, but that was when (a) I hardly ever finished anything and (b) I thought the things I did finish were perfect and only needed a little proofreading.
It's not that the things I finished were perfect, mind you. They weren't even very good. It's just that I didn't understand enough to know what the faults in them were.
My writing process in general has changed a lot over the years. When I started writing in my teens, at first I didn't outline at all. I also never finished anything. My first attempt at planning a novel was supposed to be a five-book series, and it was an extremely simple outline: here are the characters, here is the conflict, this is the resolution, repeat x 5 with bonus resolution at the very end. I did finish the first book of that but lost interest in the project. It was also the first time I wrote fiction deliberately as practice-for-writing-fiction, rather than because I thought it would be brilliant.
I took a long break from trying to write either books or short stories, ten years or so, from the when I was 21 or so until I was 31. At 31, I was Very Serious about Writing This Book Properly. I decided to write Prophecy, a Serious Book with Meaningful Themes, and plotted out a detailed outline, and set day/week/month/year goals, and wrote pieces of the story in whatever order I felt like writing them. I called it The Master Plan(tm) and generally hated 95% of working on it. I kept at it until I was done, 2.5 years later at the end of 2004. Then I pretty much said "Welp, never doing that again." I hated writing that book a lot more than I hated editing it, but I didn't like any part of the process. The process looked like this:
Fast-forward seven years, to 2013. I'd been writing, but I hadn't finished anything other than short stories since my second book. I don't even remember if I was even theoretically working on anything when I decided to start A Rational Arrangement. *checks* Doesn't look like it.
Because the process that I'd taken away from my second book had not worked for me since then, I'd been gradually modifying my process. I'd experimented with different kinds of "scoring" systems to track my progress on writing, editing, and completing projects. For A Rational Arrangement, my process involved a weird scoring system, and an outline that I didn't worry about adhering to or revising as things changed. It took me 11 months to finish the first draft of ARA, and then about 16 months to finish editing it, My process:
Over the next six months, I wrote and edited a three-novella collection, Further Arrangements, as a sequel to ARA. The collection is book-length; one of the three novellas was 2/3rds written already.
Then there was 2016, where everything changed again.
I slogged away at the start of this year on Birthright, the sequel to The Warlock, the Hare and the Dragon that I'd been writing on and off since 2006.
Near the end of March, I stopped slogging on Birthright and started The Moon Etherium, where my process looked like:
I wrote TME's first draft in six weeks, and edited it in about the same amount of time (finished edits 2.5 months later, after letting it "rest" for a month while I didn't touch it).
After that, I finally finished Birthright's first draft, and then wrote the first draft of The Sun Etherium over the next three months. That brings me to where I am now. My process going forward will be ... whatever I think is most likely to work.
I have some elements of my process that I will probably keep using, because my results with them over the last year have been so good:
I have complex feelings about "share the story as it's written", for example. On the one hand, I love positive feedback that encourages me to continue. On the other hand: I only want cheerleading while the writing is in progress, and thus I'm asking my best beta readers to either (a) read the story twice or (b) not provide critical feedback. (A) is an awful lot to ask. On the gripping hand: I think sharing the story in progress might actually slow my writing down, as I wait for feedback before continuing.
I am pretty sure that my insistence on "writing chronologically" is tied to negative feelings about Prophecy. I may try writing out of order again some day. We'll see.
I think the "write cheerful stories" is a permanent part of my process, but I don't want to lock myself into that. I do have some sober, thoughtful, heavy ideas that I might yet explore someday. It's not likely. I both read and write as escapism. My tolerance for reading or watching grimdark is very low at present. Writing happy, fluffy novels is like going off to live in a happy, fluffy world for several months. Writing grim material is the exact opposite. "How long do I want to live in this world?"
I have done the "Keep writing. Revise at the end" thing for all of the last fourteen years, though when I was a teen I was much more likely to keep going back and revising earlier sections. "Don't revise until you're done" is a common bit of writing wisdom, and it certainly make the "get words down" part of the process faster. I expect it makes the "edit the final draft" process slower, however. But I am currently pretty happy to write on and on and on, while I hate editing so much that I have three complete unedited drafts that I am ignoring to start writing a fourth book. It's quite possible I could do with exchanging "fun while writing the first draft" for "less hate while revising it".
So that's me. What are your experiences with process like? Do you keep changing your approach, or parts of your approach, while other parts stay static? What parts do you like or hate most, and why?
AUTHORS and WRITERS, which is the worst:
— Ana Mardoll (@AnaMardoll) November 26, 2016
I have a clear choice for this: editing. Definitely editing. At the end where I have to fix all the stuff I left notes for myself about fixing later. "I need to foreshadow this clever thing I thought of in chapter 15 somewhere in the first 7 chapters so that it actually looks clever." "I really should've come up with this historical timeline before I started writing but since I didn't, here it is now and I'd better make everything consistent." "Why do all three of these major characters sound exactly the same? I need to make them distinctive somehow." Etc.
Also, I don't have a good way to measure progress when I'm editing. I'm always jumping around in my manuscript looking for places to add foreshadowing or other details. Even when I'm reading through sequentially to edit for things like "make voices distinct" or "fix minor continuity errors", I usually can't hold the whole list of issues-I-need-to-look-for in my head at once, so I wind up making multiple complete passes. Editing just goes on and on until I give up. Writing is better because I can watch the book grow and see how far I've come. And once I have the thing written, I can read it, which is arguably the thing I want most out of writing. The edited version is important for readers-who-are-not-me, so that the book makes sense, but it doesn't make nearly as much difference to me.
I often wonder if the folks who prefer editing have a different process for "getting to the editing stage". Do they never come up with cool new things to add in the middle that effect the beginning? Or do they go back and add the stuff to the beginning right away, before they continue on? Is this a feature of good planning at the start? Is there a connection with experience? Because I used to hate writing a lot more than editing, but that was when (a) I hardly ever finished anything and (b) I thought the things I did finish were perfect and only needed a little proofreading.
It's not that the things I finished were perfect, mind you. They weren't even very good. It's just that I didn't understand enough to know what the faults in them were.
My writing process in general has changed a lot over the years. When I started writing in my teens, at first I didn't outline at all. I also never finished anything. My first attempt at planning a novel was supposed to be a five-book series, and it was an extremely simple outline: here are the characters, here is the conflict, this is the resolution, repeat x 5 with bonus resolution at the very end. I did finish the first book of that but lost interest in the project. It was also the first time I wrote fiction deliberately as practice-for-writing-fiction, rather than because I thought it would be brilliant.
I took a long break from trying to write either books or short stories, ten years or so, from the when I was 21 or so until I was 31. At 31, I was Very Serious about Writing This Book Properly. I decided to write Prophecy, a Serious Book with Meaningful Themes, and plotted out a detailed outline, and set day/week/month/year goals, and wrote pieces of the story in whatever order I felt like writing them. I called it The Master Plan(tm) and generally hated 95% of working on it. I kept at it until I was done, 2.5 years later at the end of 2004. Then I pretty much said "Welp, never doing that again." I hated writing that book a lot more than I hated editing it, but I didn't like any part of the process. The process looked like this:
- Outline before writing
- Revise the outline as necessary
- Write in any order
- Keep writing. Revise at the end
- Have a plan for how much writing you're going to do
- Write an intellectually and emotionally challenging story
- Share it by email as it's written (with my one wonderfully enthusiastic beta-reader, ♥
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jordangreywolf)
- Don't outline
- Write chronologically
- Keep writing. Revise at the end
- Don't make a writing schedule (no "words per time period" quotas)
- Share it as it is being written, with a small group of friends on LJ
- Write cheerful, upbeat stories about lovable characters
Fast-forward seven years, to 2013. I'd been writing, but I hadn't finished anything other than short stories since my second book. I don't even remember if I was even theoretically working on anything when I decided to start A Rational Arrangement. *checks* Doesn't look like it.
Because the process that I'd taken away from my second book had not worked for me since then, I'd been gradually modifying my process. I'd experimented with different kinds of "scoring" systems to track my progress on writing, editing, and completing projects. For A Rational Arrangement, my process involved a weird scoring system, and an outline that I didn't worry about adhering to or revising as things changed. It took me 11 months to finish the first draft of ARA, and then about 16 months to finish editing it, My process:
- Outline
- Make character & setting notes
- Write chronologically
- Keep writing. Revise at the end
- Don't revise outline even as the book changes; just keep going.
- Keep score on progress
- Share it as it is being written, with a small group of friends on LJ
- Write cheerful, upbeat stories about lovable characters
Over the next six months, I wrote and edited a three-novella collection, Further Arrangements, as a sequel to ARA. The collection is book-length; one of the three novellas was 2/3rds written already.
Then there was 2016, where everything changed again.
I slogged away at the start of this year on Birthright, the sequel to The Warlock, the Hare and the Dragon that I'd been writing on and off since 2006.
Near the end of March, I stopped slogging on Birthright and started The Moon Etherium, where my process looked like:
- Outline
- Make character & setting notes
- Revise the outline/make it more detailed if stuck
- Write chronologically
- Keep writing. Revise at the end
- Write as fast as possible while in friendly competition with haikujaguar to see who can finish first. ♥
- Don't share it as it's written
- Write cheerful, upbeat stories about lovable characters
I wrote TME's first draft in six weeks, and edited it in about the same amount of time (finished edits 2.5 months later, after letting it "rest" for a month while I didn't touch it).
After that, I finally finished Birthright's first draft, and then wrote the first draft of The Sun Etherium over the next three months. That brings me to where I am now. My process going forward will be ... whatever I think is most likely to work.
I have some elements of my process that I will probably keep using, because my results with them over the last year have been so good:
- Outline
- Make character & setting notes
- Revisit/revise/refine outline if stuck
I have complex feelings about "share the story as it's written", for example. On the one hand, I love positive feedback that encourages me to continue. On the other hand: I only want cheerleading while the writing is in progress, and thus I'm asking my best beta readers to either (a) read the story twice or (b) not provide critical feedback. (A) is an awful lot to ask. On the gripping hand: I think sharing the story in progress might actually slow my writing down, as I wait for feedback before continuing.
I am pretty sure that my insistence on "writing chronologically" is tied to negative feelings about Prophecy. I may try writing out of order again some day. We'll see.
I think the "write cheerful stories" is a permanent part of my process, but I don't want to lock myself into that. I do have some sober, thoughtful, heavy ideas that I might yet explore someday. It's not likely. I both read and write as escapism. My tolerance for reading or watching grimdark is very low at present. Writing happy, fluffy novels is like going off to live in a happy, fluffy world for several months. Writing grim material is the exact opposite. "How long do I want to live in this world?"
I have done the "Keep writing. Revise at the end" thing for all of the last fourteen years, though when I was a teen I was much more likely to keep going back and revising earlier sections. "Don't revise until you're done" is a common bit of writing wisdom, and it certainly make the "get words down" part of the process faster. I expect it makes the "edit the final draft" process slower, however. But I am currently pretty happy to write on and on and on, while I hate editing so much that I have three complete unedited drafts that I am ignoring to start writing a fourth book. It's quite possible I could do with exchanging "fun while writing the first draft" for "less hate while revising it".
So that's me. What are your experiences with process like? Do you keep changing your approach, or parts of your approach, while other parts stay static? What parts do you like or hate most, and why?
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 06:23 pm (UTC)It's been a while since I've written anything but Patricia Wrede rightly notes that every writer's process is different, and process can even be different as needed for each book.
I think revising while writing *can* be good, if there's a section that's bothering you, your subconscious may be trying to tell you something is wrong. Or your subconscious may be procrastinating on the next section, because it hasn't quite made up its mind about how to tackle it, and revising an older section may buy it some time, or give you some momentum so you can crash through whatever barrier is in the way. My vague recollection is that I prefer structural revisions as I go, and the final draft is just a matter of tightening things up.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-28 12:55 am (UTC)(This from my style of pantsing, where everything arises semi-organically -- with me trying to steer things -- from what happened prior. I tend to think of the characters as, well, player-characters. I GM them into doing stuff, and occasionally "ask" them, "Okay, what needs to be in your backstory to make you do This Thing that you aren't allowed to know is a bad idea?")
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 08:36 pm (UTC)- Work out the basic idea.
- Develop the concept — talk/think it through.
- Write/revise outline (at end of book doc with the chapter at the bottom of each chapter, automatically updated).
- Write sequentially (following the plan just below the cursor) so that details from previous chapters are still in mind. Copy edit (typos, continuity errors) as you go.
- Review and identify concept edits (voice, character arcs, etc.) and larger continuity problems.
- Concept edit pass again sequentially.
- Scan doc for "forbidden" words/phrases (octopus descendants would never make "off hand" remarks or "hear" a rumor)
- Final reading pass for enjoyment, best for last typo spotting.
I did a first, novella-sized book just winging it, and enjoyed it but it felt disorganized and less of a story than I wanted. I wound up using it as the middle third of a full book, written as above, using its contents to seed the middle part of the outline. It made me happier.Two more books so far completed in this fashion (well, the last is not quite complete), and a third tiny book (30 pages) in an abbreviated version of the same style. I hope to complete the tiny book before leaving the hospital, and finishing the third book by end of January.
I use this now for research proposals as well. Having the outline chunk right there helps me maintain focus.
Developing the initial idea is important, but difficult to put sufficient time into. And the concept pass and edit is the most tedious, as this frequently has edit implications for most of the book.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:39 pm (UTC)Your edit process sounds pretty similar to mine. My first "concept edit pass" is totally non-sequential. I'll make a list of "this is what I need to add/change" and then I'll run over the document making the changes from the list, until the stuff that's left (like character voice changes) is best done sequentially. Often I end up with multiple sequential passes too. It's just messy.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:27 pm (UTC)Vaguely outline the story in your head.
Write each chapter as you come up with interesting things that should happen next.
Make several immediate editing passes before showing it to anyone. Never touch it after that.
Long stories get shared chapter by chapter, shorter stories not until the end.
If you get to a point where it makes a complete story, end the story there even if you haven't finished the 'outline'.
I've experimented with some changes (like trying to write down a formal outline or a bunch of character and setting details) but they were a lot of work and didn't seem to really accomplish anything. In particular they didn't make me write at a less glacial pace. I can't really write anything unless I'm feeling at least a little bit 'inspired' or excited about it, basically - when I try I get literally nothing, I just stare at the page for a while.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:38 pm (UTC)I really hate it when I'm reading something and then the author decides to go back and change the chapters I already read, or delete the whole thing and start over, or whatever. I mean -- it's okay if I'm explicitly a beta reader but I mostly run into that with fanfic. I don't care if there was a slight continuity error in a previous chapter, that's better than having two different versions that I'll never keep straight, and having to wait extra-long to find out what happens next because you're going back and changing the past instead.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-28 12:52 am (UTC)I also do editing passes of the last few pages (or more, if I'm feeling terribly blah) nearly every time I manage to write -- it gets me in the world and reminds me what I want to do next -- so some fiddly-bits are just taken care of in that.
I leave... um, virtually no notes to myself of "Fix X later." I mean, I do occasionally, but honestly that's more likely to come up during an edit pass, where I need to jump around and do all the fixing of that thing.
I may axe scenes or move them around, though the last time (Crucible), when I was all but begging people to tell me if a scene didn't seem necessary or if something dragged... NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. Like, "Yeah, this part seemed to be a bit slow but just as I thought that, bam, things sped up again." *headdesk*
Mostly I write in order, but sometimes a scene will HIT me and I'll write down something bare-bones and make sure that I manage to aim the story at that scene. Sometimes I discover I've written something improbable or just too... gratuitous "MY WORLD LET ME SHOW YOU IT" or something, and then I backtrack -- often lifting dialogue that didn't depend on the setting and revising it for the other stuff. (There was a bath-house in All That Glitters... Fooooor approximately 2 pages. And then I moved THAT conversation to a rooftop, kthx.)
I haven't been able to outline since ever, unless it's non-fiction (i.e., gaming), and then I love outlines 'cause I can futz around and do bits as they interest me. I dream of doing an outlined book sometime, but I have this weird feeling I'd have to make someone else write the outline so it could trigger something more like the non-fiction stuff in my head, and not the "Outline done. Story complete. Next thing nao" response.
I like getting feedback, which includes "X is not clear, and you missed punctuation at Y" stuff as well as cheerleading, because I can usually go fix X and Y easily. Being able to have ANYTHING and edit it, even if what I do is write something entirely new, is SO MUCH EASIER than generating new things entirely from scratch.