Your Approach to Writing

As some of you may have noticed, I am a new member here. I am also a complete beginner at writing. I have several questions for experienced writers. This is one of them:

When you begin to write a story, do you plan out your plot from beginning to end, the way you might put together an outline for a research paper? Or, do you just sit down and start writing and the story goes where it goes?

Other related thoughts:
Do you focus on creating your main character(s) before approaching the plot?
Do you think about setting then build your story within it?

The more I think about this, the more I realize there are many ways to approach writing a story. What approach do you take?

 

1/ There are Planners.
and 2/ There are Pantsers.
3/ There are character-driven stories.
and 4/ There are plot-driven stories.

Some people like loads of dialogue, some don't.
Some like loads of description, some like it all action.
Some people like prologues, some don't.
Need I go on?

You gotta go where you wanna go,
Do what you wanna do...

 

My process generally is as follows:

Step one is to come up with a scenario that's appealing to me and that I think I could flesh out enough to make the word count for a novel, novella or short story depending on what format I'm interested in writing. These scenarios are often something I want to read but I either can't find or can't find enough of.

In step two I come up with the characters; what type of character personalities fit the scenario the best, and sometimes I get a feel for their looks as well.

Step three involves coming up with a very loose mental outline of where I want to begin, end, and some of the things that will likely have to happen to get from the beginning to end. I start creating the MC's backstories extensively (where/how they grew up, what course they took along the way to get them to where they are the first time they're introduced, etc.) and start thinking about what side characters I need to push the story along.

Step four: Profit Start writing

 

It varies. Stuff just comes to me as it comes.

 

First, there was a character. Then there was a second one. Then there was the conflict between them. Then there was an end. Then there was a beginning. Then I started writing

As far as the individual process goes: For my first story, I just flew by my pants. For my second one, I started the same way but ran into trouble immediately. I still like to write as I go, but for this story, I need to know the whole stuff before, as well as a rough idea where I'm going, all in my head. If not, I'm not able to write even a chapter.

But you might be completely different. I say experiment with your own writing process, and don't be disgusted if you're not writing chapters perfect in timeline and polished. I've chucked too many words to count by now, but I don't regret a single one of them. Each story, each writer is different. There's no one-fit-all solution.

 

I usually start with a premise, and my characters come as more of a feeling or a name, who then develop as I write. They usually come fully formed, except that I don't "know" them yet and need time to figure out what they will do etc. I go by feeling a lot with characters. And the plot I make as I go, sometimes taking breaks to figure out what's next before writing more.

 

I have a short(ish) list of ideas that occurred to me as being something with potential to be interesting. Could be a setting, could be a premise, could be a character. But I have that idea and then I just start writing it. Whatever I come up with it'll always be something that strikes me as having some weird and dark potential to it, a something that I can take somewhere interesting even if I don't know where exactly.

For a setting; I just had the idea that I wanted to write a book set in a beauty pageant and that was all the plan I needed really. A pressure cooker setting where people have weird personal problems and that just struck me as something I could work with. It stood out particularly because I wanted to write a lesbian romance and when it's just the girls together that seemed to fit nicely, but I didn't really have a clear idea of who would be in that world or what exactly would be going on beyond there would be a contest that would bring out the worst of everyone and there definitely would be tears before bedtime.

For a character; I liked the image of a girl who was a bikers daughter and is very masculine and aggressive and even violent, someone who acted much more like a boy her age would. I saw that as a character that has potential to work with; she has a mix of weird stuff and kinda normal stuff to her and there's the conflict there with the rest of the gang who perhaps weren't quite so happy to put up with her constantly causing trouble than her dad is. So she's a bit of a spoiled princess, but spoiled by a biker and has a punch the gang members are afraid of. I wanted to write a gender flipped romance (a macho girl with a more feminine boy), so I was just thinking of female characters who could fill that role and she seemed to fit and that was enough to start writing.

For a premise; I liked the idea of having this weird cult with their fraud of a prophet and then he dies and his fifteen year old son takes over and suddenly goes form being a babied kid into ruling the lives of his devoted followers. I knew he had been brought up by one of the women in the church and she really babied him but he barely knew his father. I knew that he was going to fall in love with her and that seemed ample to just start writing without even really knowing who those people were or how the setting worked.

In all cases, just having the germ of an idea is fine. I think that it's much better to at least start writing without preconceived notions, just starting to write the characters living their lives and seeing what seems to fit as you write them. I write character focused books and so I think it's hugely important to take the time to get to know your characters and no, that's not the same as planning them out. I think you need to just sit and write them and see how they bounce off each other, seeing what feels good and interesting and the figuring out how that fits together rather than planning them out and artificially making them bounce.

Once you have the hang of the characters and who they are then it's normally pretty easy to find the kind of drama they can get themselves into and how they'd look at dealing with it. That gives you the freedom to create something that really weaves together into something awesome. There's so many plots that look great on paper but when written turn out to be really boring and generic. It's easy to write "And the heart wrenching conclusion is..." but actually making that conclusion genuinely meaningful and deep and painful is a whole other thing that relies on your characters really being personally invested which you can only get by them just being characters in their own right.

In short; just fucking write and see where that takes you. There's been so many times where I've started writing with one idea in my head and then five pages later it's going somewhere totally different because as I wrote it I stumbled into something that was dark and sad and gripping. In my last book I was writing a girl who was pretending to have cancer. I initially thought I'd make the mum the bad guy, the one who was forcing her to pretend for the money or somesuch. And then I started writing and I got to the first scene with the girl's mum and I was revved up to make her the bad guy. And then almost the first line of dialogue she comes out with took the whole scene and indeed the whole damn book off in a completely different direction. Instead of her being this conniving, evil harridan she was someone totally different.

I thought she was evil but instead she was broke and she was tired and she had a bastard of an ex-husband and she still would never ask her daughter to do that, she wants to raise her kid by herself, even though she's flogging herself to death so they can keep their home. And her daughter shows up with money out of nowhere and the mum doesn't get greedy, she presumes her ex-husband sent it to her daughter, always happy to send her money but not to pay the money he owes his ex-wife to pay the bills. And the mum and the daughter have this incredibly sad fight because they are both so ground down. The mum doesn't even ask for the money, the girl just gives her mum the money to buy groceries because they need it and they both end up crying together and saying how sorry they are and they'll try to do better. And that was... Not what I was expecting. It blew everything I thought I knew about the whole book totally out of the water. And it made it amazing. Just because I let the character say what feels right for her to say instead of what the plot needs her to say.

Edit -

I write teenage romance if that's not clear; obviously that restrains all my settings and characters and premises because I'm always looking for an idea that (broadly) involves a normalish girl meeting a boy (or girl) but I never start by thinking about that really, I think about the other stuff that's weird and dark and complicated and then I figure out how their love interest would fit into that world.

 

My approach to writing in a GIF:



Seriously, though, to address the OP:

I'm a pantser, through and through. I get an idea, and I run with it. I usually get some idea of what the story looks like, but it's a vague mental outline that's subject to change. Sometimes all I have is a line of dialog, a description, a character, something like that. I write and see where the story takes me. I try not to think beyond "what happens next," because I'll overthink it, and that'll stifle my creativity. Instead, I just get the words on the page. I like to get words onto blank pages as quickly as possible, if only to put the page and myself out of our misery.

At the end, it's usually ugly. Like, horse crap ugly. But that works, because even flowers can grow in manure, but you have to start with something. As Stephen King says, there's merit in just writing, even when all you seem to be doing is shoveling poo from a sitting position.

 

I just sit down and start writing. I don't know enough to plan it until I've written it.

 

My stories tend to come either with a character in mind or a situation (though the other tends to follow quite quickly). My recent/current novel-in-progress came to me when I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, followed by watching the film adaptation (which was just as good as the book!), followed by me then playing a game called Skyrim (fantasy game with a medieval-esque setting/influence) and the combination of these things made me ask: What if the Black Death plague of 1348 - 1350 in England (during the medieval era - one of my favourite time periods) had caused an apocalyptic scenario similar to that described in The Road? Then, using what I have been taught during my undergraduate degree in Creative Writing throughout my planning (this novel started off as my undergraduate dissertation last year) I thought of a main character that might not have been overused before along with a secondary character for her to travel with who was also unique in her own right. Once I had these characters, I thought of plot events that were realistic and interesting enough to cover the 7,500 word count required for the dissertation. After that experience I realised that the structure of planning then writing in these smaller chunks of the narrative seemed to work really well for me (compared to other techniques I have tried in the past) so over last summer I planned out and wrote the next 11,000 word section of the novel which followed on from where my dissertation piece had ended (I had originally planned for 10,000 words but it ended up being longer and I won't complain about that haha). I recently planned and wrote the 'third' section of the narrative (which followed on from what I wrote over the summer) for my Masters degree in Creative and Critical Writing and now, after having planned the next 10,000 word section, I am ready to write the 'fourth' part. I have five sections in mind for the novel's narrative overall which should get me between 50,000 and 60,000 words (before edits). At this rate - giving leeway for personal issues, getting a job now that I have finished university, writer's block, and anything else that might disrupt my writing - I am hoping to have a completed first manuscript by summer 2018

I would suggest that you work with however it comes to you. If characters come to you first, or a situation does, then play along with it. With regards to planning, I think the choice to, or the amount you do, depends on how the writing process works for you. If you are unsure of how it works for you then I would try experimenting and see what sticks. Each process has its advantages and disadvantages. For example: no plan can be freeing for some or intimidating for others; having some plan (like myself, I tend to plan 4 - 5 checkpoints I would like my main character to reach within each 10,000 word section and I have some idea in my head about what I would like to happen between these checkpoints but all of these are open to change and while writing I tend to let my mind take over which can lead to many alterations though my checkpoints roughly tend to stay the same) is sort of like the middle ground which can make it more comfortable for some writers or it can still be intimidating; finally, completely planning everything can also be comforting or too restrictive. I sometimes find that a good writing programme (such as Quoll Writer) can help but Microsoft Word and Google Drive are also good and I tend to use all three on a regular basis.

The best thing to remember is that the writing process is a personal, and very individual one, so, although you may find that advice from us or from famous writers can help you and even influence your process, how you write will be unique to you. I hope this helps