Getting it All Down
September 14th, 2010It’s usually agreed there are two kinds of writers. First are those who blaze through an initial draft with minimal planning and editing, powered by a passion that lets the ideas keep flowing—or so I understand the process. Then there are writers like me who plot and think and second-guess and polish (and despair) and who refuse to move on until the base is solid.
So in the latest project, which is a short piece outside of any genre I’ve worked in before, I decided to be the other kind of writer, the one who just writes. I did cheat a bit. I had a pretty decent outline of the intended work to guide me. But from there it was a matter of throwing words down, and when the words didn’t come I went to Write or Die, and punched out brainstorming dialog until I had some ideas to work with.
Was it a helpful process?
Well, yes, up to a point. I got three-quarters of the story down in what for me qualifies as a very short time. But then I hit a wall. When it came time to link up the plot threads and write a coherent, meaningful climax and conclusion, I couldn’t do it. The base was not solid. The story had changed en route. I desperately needed to go back and re-define the theme, the motivation, the goal. So that’s what I’m doing now, and after that I’ll tackle the ending.
But the work was not wasted. I’m guessing 80% of what I’ve got will still be there when this next draft is done. And writing fast was actually a lot of fun.
Posted on: Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Categories: Writing.
September 15th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Never heard of Write or Die until now – will be using it from now on forever and always.
Maybe it’s because I’m kinda young, but I wrote my first three books with the kamikaze approach. After that intial ‘I GOT IT DONE’ thing, I went back and angsted for a few months on how to make it a better manuscript.
The downside with this is (like you said,) that sometimes the base story is just not good. Refining something that isn’t good at its core is a disaster. You put all that work into something that will go virtually nowhere. Very discouraging.
I’m currently trying out that second method, and only when I know I have the basics down for sure I let it flow. It’s hard and constricting, because I’m a very instinctual writer, but some part of me knows it’s for the best.
Great post!
September 15th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
It’s true I think, that the longer I’ve been writing, the more effort I’ve put into plotting the story out ahead of time. But the one hard rule from the early days was that I must always have an ending in mind before I start–though of course it might change along the way. This came about because I never knew how to end my earliest attempts at short stories.