Many authors get asked how they write. What is their process?
In my The Beginning post, I stated I’ve written since I was a kid. The first story with pictures occurred when I was seven. My process has changed over time, but some things have remained the same.
Two things have remained the same.
1) Ideas come to me organically triggered by something I’ve seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted, or read. Sometimes a combo based on the experience that became the trigger. One story I wrote when I was a teenager had a kid much like my great grandfather and I had him do things in the one-room schoolhouse my great grandfather really did. Of course, it was a fantasy world. I had it mapped out, though I’m not sure the maps are still with the notebook I wrote this in.
Sometimes I’m not sure where they come from, but the character is knocking at the door to my muse and will start ranting, “What about me?” if I don’t answer the door. That can be downright distracting when trying to slog through the middle of another project with a due date coming up. I usually have to put the idea down so I don’t forget it and the distraction ends. I go back to my ideas when it is time to start something new, whether short or long.
2) I sit down and write. I have had short periods of not writing and those times have felt odd. Not writing added to the stress of life in that season. I started Cataclysm at the end of 2020 just to prove to myself I could return to writing. I wrote it in four and a half months and jumped into taking this writing journey seriously ever since.
I have notebooks, print copies, and digital versions of everything since I was 13. I only have one thing I realized got lost in the digital death of one computer. I should dig through print outs to see if it is stuffed in one of the many binders or boxes in my cupboard. However, I have a Scrivener project started for that idea because one of the characters was screaming, “Talk to me,” last summer. He has around 8K words and knows I did not forget him.
What’s different?
I do a mix of planning with free writing, aka pantsering. Champions of Light was purely pantsered, but I got stuck around two-thirds of the way through. When I pulled it out in 2021 to dust it off for a contest, I had to determine where it should go and then clean it up so it flowed like a story should. I also had far more training to help me at that point because the idea occurred around 2008 and languished for thirteen years.
Truth Bearer, book 2 of The Light Series, was planned backwards. I know where it will end, so I sat down with the Three Story Method to determine the layout of the story and where to start. I may still change some of the first act and the opening, but having that general level of conflict, choices, and consequences has helped me write on purpose. This does not mean characters, even those pesky I’ll show up in only a couple of chapters ones, won’t derail things in a pantser moment. Thankfully, there is play room in how the chapters related to one phase of conflict, choice and consequence can move. I only do scene cards for up to eight chapters at a time, see how it plays out with the overall story plan, and work accordingly from there.
I still don’t worry about loose ends, but I’m more aware of things with the training I’ve had in the past decade, so I have fewer to fix because of the planning side of things. I still laugh, knowing two rounds of beta readers and all my edits did not catch the missing dog that would not have left his side that night. I had to rewrite it so the dog was there in a final edit.
Editing, or more fondly known as rewriting, is where I find those loose ends. Champions of Light had around seventeen full pass through edits, most for copy editing for grammar and wording. At least three passes were strictly for content and flow. I should have found the missing dog on the second pass, not the third.
I know where I want to go with my stories, but the fun part is the journey there. I like to let my characters breathe so their desires and actions feel more alive. Do I get it right all the time? No, but that is why I get at least one professional look at my work and a couple of rounds of beta readers. Follow along and you could have the chance to become one of my beta readers on future projects.
About the picture
There is a few more binders in the next cupboard over, but this area has the oldest items in notebooks, typewriter paper boxes, and the start of binders. That Champions of Light Binder has the 2008 first draft in it, which was only 2/3 to 3/4 complete before I pulled it out in 2021 for the writing contest it won.