Hi, so I have been trying to put something together for awhile. I was looking up writing techniques and came across free writing. Well, because i have a general idea of where i want the story to go, i don't think thay would work. Problem is, I kind of don't want to think of new names everytime i have a new idea, and some are co close with just a few small changes. For Example: Ron goes left, but i also want to explain what happens if Ron goes right without changing his name to Don. Does that make sense? I'm Current taking an old idea from say 10 years ago and slightly repurposing, renaming characters etc cause I was on this kick of making up names in school, but i want them to have realsitic names now, but I have other ideas that i want to work on develop as well.
Not in the slightest. But if you mean is it okay to freewrite lots of inconsistent/incompatible scenes/vignettes using the same character name, yes it's fine. Ron can be in 2 or 4 or 100 different places in 2/4/100 different freewritten passages. It's normally said to be a way of loosening up the creative faculties, rather than producing coherent novels
i've always tried to structure my writing but that's sort of what I meant. Of course part of the process is not thinking where Ron is and just writing. A big problem i have though is letting it happen and not force it.
The idea of free writing is to loosen up the brain and gain some inertia so writing the real stuff doesn't seem so... insurmountable? It's kind of like, well, I'm already doing it, so I might as well put some effort into it. I think of it like a veritical hike where if you stare at the mountaintop and the inclination of the path for too long you'll think of a million reasons not to do it. But if you just put one foot in front of the other without thinking you'll be halfway to the top before you know it. It's never worked for me either, but I can see the benefits.
Free writing is something that brings me a lot of pleasure and a lot of viable work product as well. It's brainstorming on paper.
The way I think about "free writing" is that it's like "playing" with your characters, like you would as a child with action figures. As children, we would play with our toys for hours, creating stories upon stories for each character. Sometimes the story would swap from scene to scene, or sometimes there would be a scene you like the most and then that scene would stick. Also I think you can change a character's name a hundred times before you think it fits. Sounds like you have tons of ideas to comb through. Just find what you like the most and what sticks. If you change the name midway through the story, who is going to know but you? Of course when the first draft is finished, you will want to make sure that the name is consistent throughout, but that's what Ctrl+f is for right?
