luthien

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

In which I ramble on about how I write...

I know quite a few people who can ONLY write linearly, but that's never been me. I'm not a linear writer, though I can pass as one, and a lot of the time I write in a more or less linear fashion. I'm what my old friend kaiz long ago called a random access writer - RAW. My brain likes to home in on whatever is clearest. I tend to think of it as being like islands with tall trees or mountains poking out of the mist. The only way to find out about the surrounding area is to go to the bit you can see and explore it. Sometimes those islands are close together and there's no mist, so then I look like a linear writer. But eventually, when I hit a brick wall, it's almost always because I've been writing in a straight line for too long. Once I go RAW, the blockage becomes clear, and I can keep going.

Of course, putting the words on the page is only one part of writing. There's also what happens before that. I think every writer has their own personal point at which the ideas need to leave their head. For me, it's when the ideas start turning into sentences. As soon as I have an opening sentence, I'm right. Sometimes this can happen very quickly, if there's something that's started a fire under me that's making me HAVE to write a story (eg. when Game of Thrones ended and I was so enraged that I started writing within 24 hours.) But those sorts of stories don't happen to me very often. Usually, I like to spend a while mulling an idea and poking at the POV character before I even think about creating a draft document.

Once I start writing, the question I ask myself constantly is: "How does the character feel about this?" If the ideas in my head are the skeleton, then the feelings of the characters are the flesh.

I'm not good at writing formal outlines. I've tried them in the past, and they mostly turn into draft scenes. I do keep a list of bullet points at the bottom of the page on most stories: plot points that need to be included, stray lines that need to find the right place, or just tiny details that I need to keep in mind. If I'm writing a story with a historical setting, I have a separate document with loads of notes about clothing, historical events from that time period, the history of matches and lighting, transport, food - anything and everything.

I usually have a master copy of any story I'm working on and also a reading copy in a google doc for a friend or two to read along and comment as I go. Writing can be a lonely hobby, and it helps to know before I get to the end that the words I'm putting together work for someone other than me.

So yeah, I think that sums up the main aspects of my creative process. It might not work for anyone else, but it works for me.