Writing Processes

She does kind of contradict herself in the beginning she says three books and at the end of the article indicated 3 + 4 more.... but in any case....

The point is that all of these elements are inter-related and must come together in order to create a successful book/story. She's absolutely correct there IMO.

I love the middle section of the article where she discusses Voice - the thing I personally feel is the most important element in any piece of fiction whether short or long. :)
 
kennychaffin said:
She does kind of contradict herself in the beginning she says three books and at the end of the article indicated 3 + 4 more....
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Four Terra Ignota books are planned. She spent five years just world building before proceeding to chapter by chapter plot outlines for the series.

Because of the time consuming nature of her process, she is actually world building several different universes at once. At the moment she has several ready to go once she finishes the fourth book, Perhaps the Stars. Her next series will be based on Norse mythology. She already composed a song cycle based on this mythology, Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok (link 1, link 2). In a podcast from last week, she also hinted at what the other universes she has developed are about (link).
 
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kennychaffin said:
I love the middle section of the article where she discusses Voice - the thing I personally feel is the most important element in any piece of fiction whether short or long. :)
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Pullman says much the same thing in his writing advice on the BBC site.

Myself, I find that every time I say something is the most important part of writing, something pops up and starts making things difficult. I'm inclined to say these days that "Getting it right" is the most important part. I do know that Voice is the quickest way for a writer to win or lose my trust though.
 
I don't know where I fit into all of this, style and technique wise. I have no formal training, beyond high school and college English classes. Though I love to read, growing up I had no interest in writing.

My first novel started out rather spontaneously. I had moved to a relatively remote location; no internet access for about six weeks. No television either, but that was nothing new for me. As something to do in the evenings, after work, I started writing down the thoughts running through my head at the moment. I later learned that this had a name, free writing. Soon there was enough material in front of me that some what-if ideas started coming to me. I started banging out some answers to the what-ifs in my mind. A story was born.

I finished the rough draft in six weeks. Rough draft may be a misnomer, because my thought processes keep me coming back to what I wrote before. I tend to edit a lot during the creation stage. Though there are of course some spelling, punctuation and grammar issues, and holes in the plot left to address, at a glance my rough drafts look like finished work. I found that I enjoy the editing process but learned, like others I'm sure, that I would occasionally overlook errors or holes, and not fix them, because my mind would automatically make corrections and fill in the blanks without my fingers following suit.

The beta readers that I begged to help me were invaluable to me in fixing this problem. Having nothing but my written words to base their ideas and opinions on, those folks gave me the input I needed to polish the work to the point that I felt ready to submit the work.

My current work, and other responsibilities, have slowed-down my writing but I'm still happily plugging away at the series.
 
Twenty years or so ago, I heard the award-winning Canadian literary author Sharon Butala describe how she wrote her first (and award-nominated) novel. She had given up a career as a teacher and had moved with her new husband to his isolated Saskatchewan ranch. Oddly enough, I know the area because I house-sat there for several months in 2008.

Without any plan, she started writing down bits and pieces of dialogue, scenes, descriptions, as they occurred to her, filling up little exercise books the school system provided to elementary level kids. After she had filled a fair number of these booklets, she began to consider what she had and how the various scraps might fit together. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without a picture of what the finished product ought to look like. But it worked for her.

I've also heard Diana Gabaldon describe much the same process for her first novel, the blockbuster Outlander, except she wrote scores of individual little files on her computer that she eventually fitted together and turned into a story with a beginning, middle, and end. A bestselling story, at that.

Me, I start at the beginning and write my way toward the end, and my first drafts are ninety-some percent of the final. Different people's heads work in different ways. Becoming a writer is partly finding out how your particular head functions.
 
Jigsaw puzzle; those two words describe my current writing style very well. Based on your description, apparently Sharon Butala, Diana Gabaldon, and I share at least one thing in common. I do not know these authors. I think I'll look them up.

Thanks
 
I was reading a book called "How to write like a bestselling author" by Tony Rossiter that looks at the writing approaches of fifty popular authors.

some write a series of bad short stories they turn into great novels, others plot heavily, another gets his stuff typed in bullet points and cuts them out, glues them to cardboard and pencils in connective tissue - then repeats until he has a novel's worth of material. another spends the majority of his writing time on the first few chapters and then flies through the rest of the book to the end.

There were as many methods as there were writers..

It's a better book to read on the subject of writing processes than I was expecting.
 
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Luka Datas said:
some write a series of bad short stories they turn into great novels, others plot heavily, another get his stuff typed in bullet points and cuts them out, glues them to cardboard and pencils in connective tissue - then repeats until he has a novel's worth of material.
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I kind of took to this kind of "construction writing" years ago - started in composition notebooks and then moved to word processing as I got older. I imagine the writing process is more streamlined for my generation (and further more for those after mine) than it was for folks who didn't have computers and intuitive software.

Being able to cut and paste inside of a writing processor like word makes it really easy to add that 'connective tissue' without having to work too hard to glue it together.

I also keep a separate file specifically for world building that I add to and alter as the story presents a change to the details. Bear in mind I have no formal training and have this decade long project known as an unfinished novel to show for it.
 
Matthew Hughes said:
Me, I start at the beginning and write my way toward the end, and my first drafts are ninety-some percent of the final. Different people's heads work in different ways. Becoming a writer is partly finding out how your particular head functions.
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This is my method too, except I'm aiming at 99% !
I find that I lose a lot of the "magic" of that first creative discovery when I'm doing second or third+ drafts. I want to convey to the reader my own excitement and interest in the story/scenario, so since 2013 I've written in an intensive a way as possible, trying to get everything right first time. Admittedly it doesn't work every time, so there is a risk factor.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
This is my method too, except I'm aiming at 99% !
I find that I lose a lot of the "magic" of that first creative discovery when I'm doing second or third+ drafts. I want to convey to the reader my own excitement and interest in the story/scenario, so since 2013 I've written in an intensive a way as possible, trying to get everything right first time. Admittedly it doesn't work every time, so there is a risk factor.
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I wish I could do that. I'd say in my writing at least 95% of the finished product has been adjusted, re-written or shifted around... I start out having no idea who any of the characters are going to be, how they relate to each other or what is going to happen and my first draft's usually don't make any sense. But without the initial drafting I'd have nothing to shape so I keep doing them.
 
Luka Datas said:
I start out having no idea who any of the characters are going to be, how they relate to each other or what is going to happen and my first draft's usually don't make any sense. But without the initial drafting I'd have nothing to shape so I keep doing them.
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My method involves "living" the novel and nothing else for the duration, which for me is a few weeks. Not everyone can do that - for instance, if you have children.
I have some idea of my characters before I begin, but part of the "magic" to which I was referring is discovering them and passing on the sensation of that discovery to the reader. It's all about honing your imagination. Keep everything in there in as intense and vivid a way as you can. Your subconscious will do the rest.
As I said above, it's a risky method. I have a few failed novels on my Mac, I can tell you... ;)
 
Stephen Palmer said:
When I read it back and it's rubbish.
Sometimes I don't finish them, I've got one that was 95% finished, and I thought... no. This ain't working.
Very. very occasionally I can fix it later, but usually I don't bother.
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I can see the real benefits of working your way though... kind of lets you go where the wind blows... beats trying to turn a battleship everytime you make any new additions.... which is the way my method feels.
 
Every novel is different...
I don't have a voice - each of my novels has a different voice. I find it's well worth deciding upon the voice, the amount of planning/improv etc well before I begin writing. But, as I mentioned, this is a risky thing to do and can go wrong! You also need to make sure there's plenty of space for your subconscious to work.
This series on my blog might interest you.
 
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