what works for me
This is a bit of a response to this post I made before that asked how I could translate my success in writing creative nonfiction to writing fiction. I think I've found the answer.
daydreams and snippets
I work best off of inspiration. I have always known this about myself. Some of my best writing came as a flash of light in the night and struck me down like lightning. But these were usually just scenes, disconnected and not impactful, and they didn't happen often.One of the questions I asked myself in that previous post was "how do I get a better idea of the characters I'm writing for and what I want scenes to be?" I could have filled out one of those quizzes for original characters or done more planning for my plots. But the first of those doesn't appeal to me and the second, I've found, makes my writing worse actually. So what else, then?
I found my answer by looking at what caused those flashes of inspiration. Daydreaming, mostly. That's often what precluded them. I joke that I write because I think too much. I really shouldn't be surprised that's what works, but I was.
Here's what I did. On a day I was lacking a lot of energy, interest, and motivation, I put some music on and laid down. The intent wasn't really to nap, but because I was feeling pretty terrible, I was willing to take that casualty if it happened. I try to pay attention to my own habits. From years of this, I know I'm one of those writers that often gets inspiration right as they're going to sleep, so I was attempting to recreate those conditions. It worked.
I didn't actually sleep that much that day because I would get an idea and have to write it down before I forgot. Then I would have to write out details surrounding the idea. Before I knew it, I had written the scene out in its entirety. This happened several times. It was honestly kind of funny because my family was convinced I had been sleeping all day because every time they checked on me, I was lying down. But any time they asked what I was doing, I would reply "writing". Both were kind of true.
The next day, I checked my notebook and found I had several serviceable scene drafts for my story. Their pacing was a bit off and they needed polishing, but they were compelling and that's enough to figure out how to get me writing more.
connecting the dots
What I had now was a bunch of singular, unconnected points on a graph. That is not a story. I asked myself how I was going to close the gaps. The answer, ironically enough, ended up being "by asking questions".I already knew the story I was writing for had to have five distinct arcs because of what the premise is. I had mostly written snippets from the second arc, with a single scene being for the first. Now, here's why writing my ideas as excerpts was important rather than just writing it in my notes. Snippets of prose are different from a list of ideas. They imply things outside what they explicitly describe.
In my snippets, there was a scene where Character A was trying to convince Character B to seduce Character A's husband. (Wild plot line, I know.) It was implied through the dialogue that the husband knew about this and was resisting. This wasn't a detail I had intentionally planned. Rereading it, I asked myself how the husband knew. What had occurred that this was out in the open, even if it wasn't being spoken about explicitly? Why was Character A so insistent about it? Why was the husband resistant?
This spawned an idea for another scene, one that would happen in the first arc before Character B was even present. You can then imagine how this might self-proliferate. Write a snippet, ask a question, write a snippet answering the question. Rinse, repeat, profit.
I think this is a fairly self-regulating system as well. I'm of the belief that something that isn't interesting to me won't be interesting to the reader either. If I ask a question without a compelling answer, I won't be inspired to write the corresponding scene. You might think this would mean the inspiration train would die out. It does not. I ask a lot of questions. I won't run out of directions to walk in.
In fact, I run into the opposite problem. I keep writing scenes that don't fit into the story for whatever reason. Usually, it's because it messes up the pacing. This, for me, is an excellent problem to have and I don't mind at all.
As I write things, I start ordering them how I want them to appear. Usually, this means copying the scene into the relevant document on my computer. I read through multiple times aloud to check for clunkiness and write bridges as they're needed. This is actually why I mention on my homepage that I have a tendency to rearrange things. Sometimes I find scenes work better in a different order after writing more for the story. I don't even number my chapter files because of how often I rearrange them.
leave it for dead
I actually post my chapters without editing. Don't get me wrong, I do standard checks for spelling and grammar and flow. But I tend not be the best judge of my own writing right after I write it. I can never tell if it's good or it this sounds okay or if this makes sense or whatever. I'm the kind of person that finds a beta reader indispensable, but I often don't have one for long periods of time.So I post with very minimal editing if any at all. This is why there's a warning on my site about much of my writing being rough drafts. They quite literally are my rough drafts. I do this also because I would never publish my writing if I gave myself time to think about it. I'm a bit neurotic about it, if I'm being honest.
But those aren't the only reasons I do it this way. The main reason is that I'm a much better editor once I've given my writing some distance. A lot of distance. We've completely left "sleep on it" territory with this one. I'm talking a few months, at least.
Why do I do this? Well, because the longer I go without touching something I wrote, the more objectively I can assess it when I do read it again. The more details I forget, the better. This is an issue because my memory is... uncanny. Or so I've been told. Even after a full 24 hours without seeing something I wrote, I can probably still quote entire paragraphs with more than 90 percent accuracy. Especially because I tend to ruminate on phrasing. So the forgetting part? Takes a loooong time.
I don't stop writing during this time. While I'm waiting for a sufficient amount of time to pass that I feel comfortable editing, I start this process from the beginning with a different section of the story (or a different story entirely). I keep every chapter in a separate document so as to not "reset the timer" when I go to write some more. When I want to read everything from the beginning, I have a libreoffice master document that I link to all the individual chapters. This is also how I make PDFs with multiple chapters.
Usually, I set a goalpost at this stage. For example, my plan is to go back and edit everything published for my novel Red Handed once I've reached the end of Part One. I don't know how many chapters will be in Part One yet, though I have a good idea. Instead, I've marked it with a specific plot point that starts Part Two. This is enough planning that I can feel myself making progress without stifling my creativity.
revival editing
After a piece of writing is sufficiently "dead" in my mind. I go and edit it. Sometimes I do this by simply reading it and changing things as they jump out to me as awkward or I come up with better phrasing or whatever. For me, however, there is a more effective method. It's what I call a "revival".I rewrite the piece. Without any copy and paste, I rewrite it by referencing the original when I need to. I call it a "revival" because it really does feel like raising the dead. It takes forever and is somewhat tedious at times. But I know I edit better when I do it this way. Why? Because I avoid "resetting the timer" when I do it.
Because I'm only looking at maybe a paragraph or two of the original when I do it this way, I keep fresh eyes throughout the entire process. I'm also able to keep the "writer's mindset" that I get when writing from scratch. This is better than the first method where I read through and make changes and then read through again to make more changes. That gets less and less effective with each pass through.