Reverse engineering the process.
Hello, everyone! The consistency of this blog is clearly not great, but I am doing my best to keep it going. Please bear with me, and sign up for notifications so you can stay up to date with the posts.
Writing update time! I am still revising, and not only am I revising the story but my process, too. It is both frustrating and satisfying to figure out what sort of preparation I need and want for a story; I should have done this sooner, but I can still use these things now, and can use them sooner on other projects. So, here is a non-comprehensive list of things (and a brief description of them) that I’ve found helpful and would find even more helpful in my next project.
Write like a writer, not a reader. Meaning, in order to create the sense of mystery for the reader, you (the writer) have to know what the f*ck is going on in your story. You have to know who the BBEP (big bad evil person) is, you need to know the answer to the mystery, you need to know what the stakes are for everyone around and including the main character (the main character especially, since that’s what drives the story). You need to have all the information in order to properly orchestrate the feeling of un-knowing for the reader. And how do you figure out what all this background information is?
Plan. I’m serious. I thought I could escape it, too, but all I wound up with is a half-baked manuscript with so many plot-holes it’s a sieve. Controversial opinion, but I (now) believe planning is required if you intend to take writing seriously. Outline your characters, figure out the core of your story, and do world-building for the locations your story will occupy. Do research. Write out a timeline detailing the before, during, and even a little bit of after the plot of your story. And most importantly, write out the plot. Use any of the different methods of plotting (Save the Cat, Heroes Journey, Exposition-Inciting incident-rising action-style plotting, etc.), but do it. Take some time to look up different plotting theories/methods, figure out why each part of it is important to creating a satisfying story. DON’T FORGET TO INCLUDE STAKES. I finished a 76, 200 word draft only to plot out the story for real, and I wish I’d done it beforehand. Speaking of plot…
Snippets of cool moments, random scenes, and glimpses of character interactions do not a plot make. Again, I’ve made this mistake. I had quite the cinematic ending for a story in mind, and I had blips of scenes that could lead up to it, but nothing that actually built to that climactic moment. There has to be more to the story seed than cool moments. Combining compatible ideas can help avoid this, as can implementing a central moral of theme that you want to explore. But most of all, figure out what story you want to tell and start from there. I have a really difficult time expanding my ideas beyond interesting scenes and dramatic moments, but it’s worth it to do so in order to create something you’re proud of.
There is a lot more that I’ve learned, but I'm planning to do a longer post on what I’ve learned. Let me know if there is anything you want to read about. I also want to create a resources page, so if you have any requests for the type of information you’d like to see, leave it in the Contact Me section!
The next post will come out in a couple of weeks, in an effort to maintain a middle-of-the-month update (this one being anomalous because of the lack of April update).
Learning and changing,
Micaëla