Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to story telling, but what part of creating a story do you think is easiest to you. For me, I'd say developing relationships between characters is my strong point. Also maybe dialogue, MAYBE... Anyway enough about me. What about you guys?
To me it's the characters and worlds, and also specific ideas of jokes and names etc. These are always the things that come first to me, because they're always in a surplus. I've hundreds and hundreds of characters, and ideas of new universes, countries, continents and cities pop into my head almost daily, and because I both love it so much and because I'm such a completionist and perfectionist, I always seem to end up digging deeper into the back stories of these fictional people and the lands they inhibit than I need to, or even ought to, especially at such an early stage of the development. I love the actual writing as well, don't get me wrong, but I have to restrain myself to get myself to focus on it and not all these things that won't even make it into the story, or that belong to other stories completely. Because I'm interested in geography, philosophy, religion, languages and accents in general, those tend to pop up early in the development of a story idea and I have to deal with them each in turn to be able to move on to the actual writing in some way, and usually they end up not being important at all to the end product, but that doesn't stop it from being vital to me, and the project's universe as a whole as I'm envisioning it as I build it.
Same for me. Dialogue, character development and consistency. When my characters are 'on,' so am I. I'm really bad at beginnings, though. And I have to fight the urge to include too much detail, and too many adjectives and adverbs. Those are the things I struggle with the most.
This probably means your stories are rich with detail, as well as believable cause and effect. This is great, as long as you can keep it all under control. But I suppose, in a way, it's no different from writing fiction that is set in the 'real world,' is it? The real world is huge, many languages and people, etc, but an author doesn't try to include them all in a story. My novel is set in the old west, in the USA. It's startling how many of the usual topics connected with that period I had to leave out of my story. Like you, though, I've researched a lot more than what I've used. Tip of the iceberg, and all that.
The dialogue and interaction between the characters is the easiest part for me. I can see and hear them talking to each other. But the setting, though I see it, experience it, it's been harder to get down on the page.
I'm rather pessimistic about my own writing. However, I've been told by others though that I'm rather good at tone. Not entirely sure what that's supposed to mean, but until my fourteen days are up it'll remain a happy mystery.
I think what people mean by that is that when you write a thriller is tense, when you write a romance it's soppy, etc. People have always told me I'm good at dialogue, and that I have "cool" plots. I'm happy with that!
I once had someone say my writing was like Dan Brown. To this day, I'm not sure if that was supposed to be an insult or a crappy attempt at a complement. At any rate, characters are what comes naturally to me. They always seem to burst through the void saying, "I've got a story! I've got a story!" Then comes the setting, then the actual plot.
I took it as an insult, because I don't want my writing style to be as sloppy as Dan Brown's. Then again, if he could do it, then so could I.
Plotline, theme, and tone always come first for me, usually in that order too. It's always about what I want to tell before who I want to tell it with.
Interesting question! I'm not sure. I'm a pantser most of the time so when I sit down to write I have vague notions of what the story is going to be. I would say the most natural part is when I can tap into the tone of the piece. It comes part from getting a handle on the character, part from mood, and part from I don't know - it's just something instinctive ( picking out certain words. ) I think the hardest for me is the cracking the overall character goal - which is tied up in the plot. So I would plots are probably the hardest. A least one that behaves like a plot.
For me it's coming up with characters and premises/relationships/background for who they are. Then I struggle with where they're going and what they want. That's the hard part...and the really important one...
I'm strong with dialog and weak at description. That's my assessment of my work, however, and someone else who reads it might disagree. A story shouldn't be judged by how simple the plot is. I agree with Cogito when he says "it's how you tell it", because it really is true.
If I were to answer this question honestly, I'd say creating a twist in the story. I'm the type of guy that doesn't like your cookie cutter plots. If my story isn't creative in the way it is told, that by the end of the story the reader doesn't get that "Oh!" type of felling that makes them smile, I've not done my job.
i've never noticed any difference re 'easy' or not so... i just write... and the words keep flowing from brain to fingers, till i get to the end...
Characters come easy to me. I usually see them in a flash, like a snapshot suddenly appears in my head. I know not just what they look like, but who they are, what their motivations are, what their fears are, and so on, almost instantly. If some of that is vague to me, I write little scenes involving them, and it all comes clear pretty quickly. Plots are tough for me, because I'm a pantser - I let the characters do their thing. At some point, though, I have to step in and decide which of their actions are important and which are not - I have to impose some kind of order on the thing. This is usually the work of the second draft. I'd like to say prose style comes naturally to me, but it doesn't. I value it very highly, and I'm proud of how well I write when I really try, but it takes a lot of work. I revise a lot. I sweat over it. I think I eventually produce a good product, but it's not easy and it doesn't necessarily come naturally. However, the older I get, and the more experience I get, the easier it seems to become. I guess that's either because I'm getting better at it, or my standards are lowering.
What comes naturally to me: -creating characters (I actually have plenty of carefully crafted characters in reserve 'cause I come up with more than I can use) -dialogue -sex scenes -action scenes (especially hand-to-hand, knife, or firearm -related violence) -very broad story ideas (the idea for our current WIP came from me listening to the music of an old NES game, Metroid, and I got the itch to write a dark sci-fi story set in space with a physically capable female MC; how's that for broad strokes?) I suck at: -more detailed plotting -description -writing 12-15yo girls (I find they're a breed apart from from the rest of humanity) -breaking away from my own default characters (sometimes I realize halfway through a story I've just repeated an old character, so I gotta go back and rewrite a shitload of scenes because of that; sorry, @KaTrian! )
I think most of the facets of writing come naturally to me, that's probably why I like to write so much. Coming up with stories, settings, and characters is a natural process for my brain (that's probably the case with, like, 99,9% of people here). However, most of the time the stuff that come naturally to me is not exactly of high quality, it doesn't scintillate with never-before-seen brilliance, sizzle with unrivaled wit, or smolder with delectable, braingasmic imagery. That's something I really have to work on. ... in addition to punctuation, syntax, well, pretty much all things grammary. Those skills are becoming more and more instinctive (or natural), but I've still got a long way to go. Plus sometimes I'm stuck in a rut and write the same cowardly teenage boy no one wants to read about over and over again.
I'm good at letting things happen, letting plots evolve, in fact I'm okay with most aspects of writing except description, I'm terrible at writing description.
Naturally I'm very good at coming up with ideas or concepts that would be great in a story. For example, I have an idea for an "Extended life" drug that is only used on prisoners with consecutive life sentences. Then there's another idea for a bed that starts as the bed your mother gives birth to you in, which later becomes your crib and the bed you sleep in until it becomes your coffin at the end of your life. Now it's just developing the story that these plot devices are used in that takes time.
Considering I made a few stabs at comedy writing, I seemed to have developed a knack at finding intersections of ideas that produce humor. I've also found developing my character's traits to be fun, its almost therapeutic. I don't think it necessarily means I'm good at it, but its something I tend to enjoy.
