In the middle of outlining chapter 3. I kind of outline and write at the same time... I start off in outline form, like a list, and then if a certain snip of dialogue pops into my head, I write that down and go on writing the scene from there. For example, here, the end of the chapter came to me first. A line that said, "I am the one you have been both seeking and denying since the day you woke up in that lab..." That just caught me and I started writing from there. Now I have the last page or so of the chapter written. So now it's time to go back and see what else pops in my head for the chapter.
This is how I work best. I hesitate to call myself a pantser OR a plotter, because I do both. I don't plot the entire novel out ahead of time in great detail. I get a beginning, some of a middle, and an idea of an end in mind. Then I look at act one. I figure out what happens at the turning point at the end of act one, and think about what needs to happen for me to get there. Then I start writing. At the beginning of each chapter, I outline that particular chapter to make sure that the story is going in the direction I want it to and that I definitely cover certain things in that chapter. Then I write a decent draft of that chapter (I usually do two drafts of it), and then I move on to the next chapter to do the same thing. At the end of an "act," I will go back and make sure everything is coherent and everything is doing its job. Then I repeat for acts two and three. After all that is done, it's time to put it away and do work on something else. Some people say put it away for six months. Not me; I think a month suffices. Besides, when working on a series, you want to be sure that what you are doing is working in the first book before you move on to the next. After a little break, pick up the manuscript and read it through in one sitting (heh, right... Not around this house!). That is just to see how it reads. Make little notes, but don't fix anything yet. After I'm done with that, I will go back and fix what needs to be done, until I'm happy with it. Then I send it to my trusted readers, which in my case are the members of my writing group. They tear it to shreds and send back the tattered remnants. It's not how everyone works, but it works for me. I've tried countless "methods" of writing, but nothing works like the natural way for me. There really are as many ways of writing as there are writers.
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ROFL the tattered remnants!
ReplyDeleteHey, do you get those scenes in your head that play like a movie, and you're just scrambling to keep up with it, typing as fast as you can? All of my stories come to me in live action, like a film, and I have to work to describe the scene as the action unfolds in my mind.
Just wondering if I should be writing screenplays instead.
Mine run through my head as if they are really happening, which sort of stinks because I am not the world's fastest typer. But what really are the most vivid in my mind during the scenes are the emotions that the characters have while in that scene. Dialogue and emotion always comes first to me. Then I need to go and look around, and see where the characters are, and what they are doing. When I am really in the "zone," I can be a mess. It's like I can really channel the characters. I have yet, however, to have a fit like Christian Bale did on the set of Terminator. ;)
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