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lomonaaerenI got an anonymous request in the last one-shot I posted to talk about my writing process and where I get my ideas. And so, because God knows I can never shut up about writing if given half a chance, here’s some random babble.
(Note that none of this is necessarily a good idea to imitate. But it’s how I write).
First of all, I hate revising. Fiction, anyway. I can revise essays just fine, because you don’t drag yourself through two degrees in English literature without learning that. But when I try to revise stories—beyond correcting typos and inconsistencies—I’m just as likely to wind up with something worse than the original, because I’m not certain what the best replacement for a non-working scene is, or where a scene needs to be added. (Also, I’m no judge of my work. I’ve written things that I thought were brilliant and which came across as stilted to other people, and I’ve written stories when I was sobbing with weariness that should, by rights, have had a shitload of typos and generally wooden dialogue and which readers loved).
So, since I started writing fiction fifteen years ago, I would write a story, become dissatisfied with it or realize it didn’t quite work, and, instead of going over it with a fine-toothed comb, I would—go off and write something else. Because I thought the next thing was certain to be better, you see.
And quite often it wasn’t. But over time, usually when I’d repeated a mistake two or three times in a row, I slowly learned what things did and didn’t work for me. Among the things I learned this way: how to write characters who believed quite different things from me (I think I’m near now to writing convincing religious characters, though I’m an atheist who has never been religious), how to describe action scenes, how to get rid of silly dialogue tags like “ejaculated” and “grated,” how to cut down on use of adverbs and adjectives, how to notice repetitive word use, and so on.
What I post now is the product of many, many times leaping off the cliff and being certain I could fly. Then I’d crash and figure out why I crashed. Then I’d climb back up the cliff and build another pair of wings. Finally, the wings started working more often than they failed. (At least, I think so, but as I told you, I’m no judge).
Second, I work at it as often as I can. That is, nearly every day. There are days I’m too tired or too sick to write, and so I don’t. But I usually wind up feeling better when I do. Writing makes me happier than anything else in the world.
If you can write every day, even if it’s only a hundred words or so, you too can beaddicted fixated obsessed productive.
Third, I learned to type. Seriously, this is some of the most basic advice I can offer, and also the best. If you don’t know how to type, it’s easy to get frustrated and give up on writing altogether. I spent a lot of time throughout the first story I ever finished hissing at myself for making mistakes every few seconds or hunting frantically for the N key. When I became a skilled ten-fingered typist, it became easier to organize my thoughts, and much easier to feel like I was accomplishing something.
I didn’t have instruction in typing; I figured it out on my own, through that experimentation I mentioned above. (Autodidact, that’s me). So it’s not necessary to take a class if you don’t want to or can’t afford one. But it is necessary to give yourself the time and patience to get good at it. It took me months. But I wanted to write, damn it.
Fourth, I hear the next words in my head. This is very hard to describe. Bear with me as I become confusing.
Basically, the times I have to pause and feel about for the words I want are few and far between. I’m typing along; I don’t know what comes next, unless this is one of those rare scenes I had to outline in advance because of a mass of detail, but I’ll know when I get to that sentence or that phrase. It’s like observing the scene happening in front of me and having the ability to record it as fast as it happens.
I am not sure how to recommend imitating this if you want to, because I am not sure how I learned it. However, it helps that I hear words in my head as I read. This is like hearing someone reading me my own story.
Fifth, I go really fast. Unless I’m just starting out on a story, when I have to feel my way carefully, or tired or sick, I can type about 1000 words in 15 minutes. Since my chapters are usually around 4000 words, it takes me around an hour to wrap them up. But I usually work on them for 15 minutes at a time, then take a break and do something else for half-an-hour, so they take longer to get edited and posted.
This is a combination of points three and four: I know how to type, and I hear the story. That lends itself to speed.
As for where I get ideas, there’s three places: reading, the game I’ve trained my mind to play, and empathy. I read an awful lot, usually around 200 to 300 pages a day, and I’m always noting different ways the story could have gone, or, if it’s nonfiction, things the writer didn’t have enough space to cover, points that can be twisted, or places I disagree. That spins out a lot of stories. “What about writing a story where the woman and man didn’t get married instead of one where they did?” “How would I write a friendship that complex but base it on two characters with different personalities?” “What about a Victorian England where women were allowed to practice science?”
The game I’ve trained my mind to play is a variation of something I think everybody does when they people-watch and make up interesting backstories for them. I watch people, buildings, animals—I don’t drive, which is an advantage here—weather, signs, seasons, things that happen around me, reactions to things that happen around me, Internet kerfuffles, puddles, cars, etc. They don’t always give me story ideas by themselves, but they cause my mind to react and add to my constant running internal commentary. And a reactive, aware, awake mind is a lot more likely to produce story ideas.
The one disadvantage of having trained my mind to play this game is that I cannot shut it up. Hence waking up in the middle of the night because my mind has something it wants to tell me.
As for empathy, I want to know why people act and believe differently than I do. The inside of my head makes sense to me; the inside of other people’s heads don’t, necessarily. So I try to learn about them, and read their words, and dig out more questions, and read some more (or listen, if I get the chance). And then I try my very best to get inside their heads when I write characters like that. If it works, then I can understand why, say, someone on the opposite side of a political point from me believes and behaves that way, without thinking they’re just stupid.
I’m not sure if that’s clear. Sorry if it’s not.
(Note that none of this is necessarily a good idea to imitate. But it’s how I write).
First of all, I hate revising. Fiction, anyway. I can revise essays just fine, because you don’t drag yourself through two degrees in English literature without learning that. But when I try to revise stories—beyond correcting typos and inconsistencies—I’m just as likely to wind up with something worse than the original, because I’m not certain what the best replacement for a non-working scene is, or where a scene needs to be added. (Also, I’m no judge of my work. I’ve written things that I thought were brilliant and which came across as stilted to other people, and I’ve written stories when I was sobbing with weariness that should, by rights, have had a shitload of typos and generally wooden dialogue and which readers loved).
So, since I started writing fiction fifteen years ago, I would write a story, become dissatisfied with it or realize it didn’t quite work, and, instead of going over it with a fine-toothed comb, I would—go off and write something else. Because I thought the next thing was certain to be better, you see.
And quite often it wasn’t. But over time, usually when I’d repeated a mistake two or three times in a row, I slowly learned what things did and didn’t work for me. Among the things I learned this way: how to write characters who believed quite different things from me (I think I’m near now to writing convincing religious characters, though I’m an atheist who has never been religious), how to describe action scenes, how to get rid of silly dialogue tags like “ejaculated” and “grated,” how to cut down on use of adverbs and adjectives, how to notice repetitive word use, and so on.
What I post now is the product of many, many times leaping off the cliff and being certain I could fly. Then I’d crash and figure out why I crashed. Then I’d climb back up the cliff and build another pair of wings. Finally, the wings started working more often than they failed. (At least, I think so, but as I told you, I’m no judge).
Second, I work at it as often as I can. That is, nearly every day. There are days I’m too tired or too sick to write, and so I don’t. But I usually wind up feeling better when I do. Writing makes me happier than anything else in the world.
If you can write every day, even if it’s only a hundred words or so, you too can be
Third, I learned to type. Seriously, this is some of the most basic advice I can offer, and also the best. If you don’t know how to type, it’s easy to get frustrated and give up on writing altogether. I spent a lot of time throughout the first story I ever finished hissing at myself for making mistakes every few seconds or hunting frantically for the N key. When I became a skilled ten-fingered typist, it became easier to organize my thoughts, and much easier to feel like I was accomplishing something.
I didn’t have instruction in typing; I figured it out on my own, through that experimentation I mentioned above. (Autodidact, that’s me). So it’s not necessary to take a class if you don’t want to or can’t afford one. But it is necessary to give yourself the time and patience to get good at it. It took me months. But I wanted to write, damn it.
Fourth, I hear the next words in my head. This is very hard to describe. Bear with me as I become confusing.
Basically, the times I have to pause and feel about for the words I want are few and far between. I’m typing along; I don’t know what comes next, unless this is one of those rare scenes I had to outline in advance because of a mass of detail, but I’ll know when I get to that sentence or that phrase. It’s like observing the scene happening in front of me and having the ability to record it as fast as it happens.
I am not sure how to recommend imitating this if you want to, because I am not sure how I learned it. However, it helps that I hear words in my head as I read. This is like hearing someone reading me my own story.
Fifth, I go really fast. Unless I’m just starting out on a story, when I have to feel my way carefully, or tired or sick, I can type about 1000 words in 15 minutes. Since my chapters are usually around 4000 words, it takes me around an hour to wrap them up. But I usually work on them for 15 minutes at a time, then take a break and do something else for half-an-hour, so they take longer to get edited and posted.
This is a combination of points three and four: I know how to type, and I hear the story. That lends itself to speed.
As for where I get ideas, there’s three places: reading, the game I’ve trained my mind to play, and empathy. I read an awful lot, usually around 200 to 300 pages a day, and I’m always noting different ways the story could have gone, or, if it’s nonfiction, things the writer didn’t have enough space to cover, points that can be twisted, or places I disagree. That spins out a lot of stories. “What about writing a story where the woman and man didn’t get married instead of one where they did?” “How would I write a friendship that complex but base it on two characters with different personalities?” “What about a Victorian England where women were allowed to practice science?”
The game I’ve trained my mind to play is a variation of something I think everybody does when they people-watch and make up interesting backstories for them. I watch people, buildings, animals—I don’t drive, which is an advantage here—weather, signs, seasons, things that happen around me, reactions to things that happen around me, Internet kerfuffles, puddles, cars, etc. They don’t always give me story ideas by themselves, but they cause my mind to react and add to my constant running internal commentary. And a reactive, aware, awake mind is a lot more likely to produce story ideas.
The one disadvantage of having trained my mind to play this game is that I cannot shut it up. Hence waking up in the middle of the night because my mind has something it wants to tell me.
As for empathy, I want to know why people act and believe differently than I do. The inside of my head makes sense to me; the inside of other people’s heads don’t, necessarily. So I try to learn about them, and read their words, and dig out more questions, and read some more (or listen, if I get the chance). And then I try my very best to get inside their heads when I write characters like that. If it works, then I can understand why, say, someone on the opposite side of a political point from me believes and behaves that way, without thinking they’re just stupid.
I’m not sure if that’s clear. Sorry if it’s not.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 10:37 am (UTC)