Whenever I read or listen to author interviews, one of the things that fascinates me most is their writing process. How do they get from idea to “The End”? And where do their ideas start?
Premise
For some authors, plot comes first. They’re interested in what happens. They’re the ones who ask “what if?”. What if time travel was real? What if a horse walked into a bar? As you can see from my… uh… shining examples, this isn’t my forte.
For other authors, theme is the point of entry. They take a contemporary issue like climate change or racism or any other societal ill and build a story around it. Many of these authors are teachers at heart. They want to raise awareness and get readers to empathize with a point of view they might otherwise not have considered.
And finally there are those of us for whom character comes first. They start with an intriguing character and throw plot at them just to see how they’ll react. I’m one of those writers, and even as a reader, the most intricate plot and the most heartbreaking injustice leave me cold when the characters don’t grip me.
Most successful authors, of course, are good at all three of these elements and a few more besides. That’s what I aspire to, and that’s what I’m working on when I’m working on my craft.
Drafting
Another area of craft that intrigues me is outlining. As a pure discovery writer, I’ve never been successful with it, but I’m determined to give it another go once I’m done with my current series. There’s got to be a more efficient way of writing than the one I use, and the fact that I prize efficiency in my daily life gives me hope that eventually I’ll find a more efficient way of writing that actually works for me.
Any writing I do tends to run long. Very long. I put everything plus the kitchen sink into my first draft. Every excruciating detail of setting, action, and thought. If my protagonist crosses a room, you can be sure that I’ll catalogue his every step, down to the individual fibers of the carpet. I need that level of detail to anchor everything in my mind, to really put myself into the scene. My first drafts also contain a lot of what more organized writers would put in character sheets and prewriting.
Also, I write what I call rolling drafts. I usually begin a writing session by editing what I’ve already written. If I’m in a phase where I write every day, I usually edit only what I wrote the day before. When there are longer breaks between sessions, as tends to happen when life gets in the way, I sometimes start at the beginning and do an editing pass. More inefficiency, of course.
Revising, Rewriting, and Editing
Once I’m done with the first draft, I’m probably closer to what might be a third draft for more linear writers. Still, there’s always a lot of wrestling to do. Foreshadowing and retrofitting. Making individual characters’ voices distinct. Getting the timeline to work. Darning any glaring plot holes. Removing inconsistencies. Deleting scenes that don’t move the plot forward, and writing additional scenes that do. And getting from photorealistic settings and extensive rumination or dialogue to a leaner, more pointillist text. In short, showing, not telling. Not to mention eliminating overused words and thinking up fresh replacements for tired metaphors. All the things that bring the story forward and let the author fade into the background.
When I’m in this phase, I also bring in the dear members of my writing-group for a fresh look. They push me to flesh out scenes that fall flat and make me go deeper, make me explore the characters’ emotions more deeply than I might on my own. They call me out when I’ve been taking shortcuts and trying to get away with things that, deep down, I know aren’t working. Sometimes they help me work through a thorny plot issue, and they come up with ideas that I never would’ve had on my own.
And all the while I’m revising and editing and polishing until I’m satisfied enough to get the manuscript to a beta reader or two. Then there’s another round of revisions, and then I’m finally done and ready to query.
My current project is at that stage. Let the querying begin, and this time I’m determined not to stop until I’ve reached 100 rejections – or success.