Writing Process: Introduction

The thing you will hear most when watching your favorite author’s writing process is that it is personal, and what works for them may not work for you. This was not something I wanted to hear, as I wanted to be able to emulate them, recreate my works in the same fashion as theirs. But what happens is, you work so hard to mold yourself to their writing style, that you lose your own.

This is an opportunity for me to explore what works for me and what does not, and a place to collect some of the best advice I have gleaned from all of the time I have spent watching others explain how they write. 

The hardest thing in the world is getting over the fact that your writing is never going to be perfect the first time around. Your idea lives in your head in its most perfect form, and you have to figure out how to get what is up there onto the page, and there are so many ways to get from point A to point B. My biggest struggle is writing words that I am not immediately satisfied with, and being okay enough to move on without agonizing over word choice. I would have nothing to edit, if I can’t get the first draft out, and this is something that I have to remind myself of all.the.time. I was never a person who wrote drafts of anything. In fact, I would scoff at the idea of needing to write something multiple times in order for it to be well-done. Writing a novel is a sad, sad wakeup call.

I would never tell someone how they should go about writing something. I am going to outline what I do, and what I have found works for me. Some of it is adopted from writers I admire, but all of it has to be adapted to fit my own needs. There are pieces of any kind of story that need to be addressed. For example, what is a book without a character? Certainly not a story. That character does not need to be human by any means, in fact it could be an inanimate object, but there is no story if we don’t have a character who wants something. And all this needs to stem from an idea. 

There are other elements as well that I like to address, and that can be adapted into different stories in different ways. Point of view is important, for it is the lens through which we get the story. Take non-fiction historical works for example: history is told through the point of view of the winning side, those fortunate enough to tell their stories. Take the opposing view, and you would have a completely different history. And this is non-fiction, this is fact. Fiction is well told lies. Elaborate, complex lies that tell a different sort of truth. The person telling these lies matters.

 Mood is also crucial. The words you use to tell the story need to elucidate a feeling from the reader. If you set the expectations of a mood, and then deny the reader that mood with word choice, it is going to be jarring and off-putting. 

World-building and dialogue can be done in so many ways, and focus on each changes depending on the kind of story you are trying to tell.

Suspense and emotional impact is what gets your readers invested. Surely your writing should be for you first and foremost. But you should always keep your audience in mind as well.

Then of course there is the nitty gritty: the plotting (THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART) and drafting, the editing, the plot structure, the research and what comes once the manuscript is done. 

All of these are things I will touch on in a way that makes sense for me. This is my personal approach to writing, my place to dump all of the information I have collected. It is of course my hope that it may someday help someone else, but the ultimate goal is to write my map from Point A (the perfect, well crafted idea that can only exist in my head) to Point B (the eventual translation, the words that come out onto the page).

Your story in your voice, the experience you have to share – this is what makes you a unique writer. This is what you stand to lose when you try to emulate other authors exactly. The author you admire is already published, already paid for what they do. If a publisher wanted the exact same, they’d go to the source. Copying them exactly leaves you with nothing. That is not to say you can’t use the same process as them, or try to approach your own writing in the same way. In fact, I borrow heavily from some of the authors I admire, because they are who inspire me to continue writing every day. They are who I eventually hope to emulate – but in a way that is completely original and my own.