I start with a character (a fairly vague conception of one; I want to discover him as he discovers his story) and a direction I'm heading. I have a concept in my head that gives me the direction. I don't need more than that. Then I just start writing scenes involving my character. Not all of them will make it into the novel, but some of them will. This process forces me to create story. After I've written a few scenes, I can start piecing the skeleton of a plot together, but I'm never tied down to that. I don't think plot is all that important, anyway. I just want character arcs. I want my MC to grow and change and learn and become stronger (or, sometimes, weaker) by the end of the story. I'm confident that as I write, I'll find something resembling a plot. Then I'm charging right in and writing. Eventually I find a satisfying ending. At that point, I have a first draft, and I can finally see the story thread running through it. Then it's a matter of ripping whole sections out that are irrelevant to that story thread and doing extensive revisions. I would never write a 25,000-word outline. I consider my first draft my outline. For me, writing is about discovering my story, and in doing so, discovering something about myself. Planning everything out ahead would remove the possibility of discovery, and if I don't have the possibility of discovery, I don't have any motivation to write.
CAN I write a story a day? Eh, sure, if I wanted to. But I don't. Well, revision can take care of that. I believe that a decent novel can at least have a rough draft completed in a week. I think my record was just over 2 weeks for a novel draft and I do think it was at least decent.
I need the drive. It might come from a plot idea, a character I want to use, or even an image I want to use. It can be anything, but it has to drive me and make it so I can't NOT write it.
Most people do it just for exercising their mind. I wouldn't mind doing it, because at the end of the month in May, I'll have 31 short stories that I just need to polish up in order to send them out to a publisher. Compared to more than a year working on a novel, I quite like those numbers. Of course revision can take care of it. Revisions can take care of anything in a rough draft format. However if someone came up to me and asked me to read the rough draft that they'd done in two weeks or less, I'd say no.
^^^^ Eh, I guess it's good in exercising the mind. At the same time, you don't necessarily need to write down your stories to exercise the mind. There's always a story or twelve brewing in my head. And I don't typically spend more than a year working on a novel. Even with polishing factored in. Well, one could say the same thing about a bunch of short stories written in consecutive days. I am at least as inclined to believe that somebody churned out a palatable novel draft in 1-2 weeks as I am to believe that they wrote a good short story every day for a month. Both are not the norm, so I don't think it's fair to write off something simply because of how fast it was produced. Heck, if somebody was inspired enough to push out a whole novel draft in 2 weeks, I might be more inclined to look at it than if they had to push out a short story just to keep pace with a "1 a day" schedule. Inspiration is powerful stuff, after all. All I'm saying is that if somebody can write a short story every day, they can certainly produce at least a decent rough draft of a novel in a few weeks.
True, they both aren't the norm, however novels have more depth to them, have more descriptions, possibly more characters, thrive more on setting, and words, while short stories have all of that, but to a lesser extent. Novels need more polishing than short stories (in most cases). I've read the first page of someone's first draft novel and couldn't go any further with it until they touched everything up. My friend from school had dished out a novel in record time, and though it had a great plot to it, the writing wasn't the greatest because she spent more time shooting out a stream of words to finish the novel.
Well, I'd argue that could be the case with a short story as well. It requires considerably less, but it still requires a decent amount of all of those things. (And for the purposes of this discussion, let's not worry about polishing. We'll just consider drafts given the strict time restraints.) So a short story a day? You have to create a new story every day. I could see a day or two of inspiration leading to some good pieces, but honestly, you're going to have a difficult time convincing me that it's possible to write a good short story every day for over a month but it's not possible to put out a half decent draft of a novel in two weeks. Novels might require more of everything that makes a short story. Let's say it takes at least 14x more from a fairly decent sized short story. If you can write 14 good short stories in 2 weeks (which I believe is what you claim), why not a novel? You don't need to start from scratch with every new chapter, so I would think it'd be even easier so you can build from what you have. And arguably, I'd say that you'd be dealing with LESS characters with a novel if it's one novel verses several short stories over the same period. It'd be less setting as well and probably less descriptions. More cumulative words? Perhaps, but if there is inspiration flowing, it's doable. I could say the same thing about not being able to read the first page of a short story churned out in a day (or even better, the one churned out after several days of churning out one short story a day) that you said with the novel. When you rush anything, the writing will probably be compromised. But, sometimes you do gotta strike while the inspiration is hot. And as I said, once you got a draft, you can work on touching it up. But I think it's at least as likely to write a novel draft in 2 weeks as it is to consistently write a story a day for an extended period of time. (I actually did write a novel draft in 2.5ish weeks once and while it obviously needed/still needs considerable work, I felt it was probably at least as up to par with works that took 3/4 times as long.)
It's certainly doable, but it isn't something I would consider doing. I think Hemingway's method is more reasonable. He wrote one good page a day. I think that's a fair balance between quality and quantity.
I've tried flashfiction and it really wasn't for me. It was smothering. Just because something in writing CAN be done (and even done without it being absolutely unreadable drivel) doesn't necessarily mean it's exceptionally memorable or compelling either.
I've written two flash fiction pieces, have both of them in contests. A six-word story I created (inspired by Hemmingway) won a contest as well. I'm better at writing smaller piece of fiction than the longer short stories of over 1k words.
Yes, we do. I've never liked reading short stories--always been put off by them, but I think that's because I've never really written any. I just can't ever seem to figure out how to put together a beginning, middle, and end in 5k words or less. I think like a novelist too much.
^^^^I get that. It's why I got so few short stories in my catalogue. (But I AM glad I wrote them cause one of them is currently the only thing I have in any kind of official print. lol) But I do think it's doable. Maybe just think of it as writing a scene of a novel that can stand alone.
Hmm. I've never tried doing this. Remember, a short story can really be of any length, so long as it supplies the beginning, the middle, and the end. I like Poe's recommendation: A short story's length is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, Edgar Allen Poe "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) Ergo; If nothing else, it should prove to be a stimulating exercise...maybe to break through ye olde writer's block!
But what if you happen to read a novel in one sitting. It's no longer a novel! It's a hella long short story! lol Definitely something those who have a hard time of breaking through writer's block should try, I agree.
I think Poe was just referring to the situation where one can read something in one sitting and successfully retain the story. Sure, one can read an entire novel 300+ pages or much more in one sitting (I know I have, esp if the book caught me) but are you really retaining the information and the message compeletely? Poe was very in tune with his work and his audience, and wrote pieces for the point of stimulating the mind. He felt that if a piece was too long (at least with short stories) the audience loses the connection and their ability to really understand the author's message. This was the reason he kept his prose in the realm of poetry and short story. He did not want to reader to get lost in the maze of plots and elongated prose. Short stories are concise and well crafted, and imo, have the ability to sometimes leave a much larger impact on the reader due to their size alone. Anyway, that aside, I do have a question that kind of pertains to the OP's topic. Instead of writing a story a day, how do people feel about writing a chapter a day, at least when working on a novel? Do most people write more than this, or write until they have exhausted their creative resovoire? Do some write a chapter, every other day, spending the off days to revise the chapter? Thoughts?
Back when was in school I could dish out a chapter a day for a novel because I had no care for how the story read, never really paid attention to proper grammar and the things I've learned on up to this point in time. Now days I can't make it through a chapter in a day. I simply stick to one notebook page a day instead. My internal editor would never shut up if I tried writing a whole chapter in a day, lol. Edit: I just finished two stories today in order to catch up with the "story a day in May." Whew!
I'm new to creative writing so I only ever write flash fiction. I can usually write a rough draft of a short story in a couple of hours. Writing a short story every day sounds like it could be quite fun!
One can write a story a day. I do not write a story a day. I may add to a work in progress. I find it much more rewarding to take more time in writing a piece and make it as good as possible. I do enjoy flash fiction myself, but it tends to have a rather depressing effect, so I try to mix it up.
