My Current Writing Process

Hey guys! Sorry about the absence, the internet decided to stop interneting. Please forgive me! I’ll have to do another post soon but for now please enjoy this pre-written piece of writer ramblings!

 

I love hearing about other’s writing processes to try and work out my own. Warning, this is just the current process. It changes every time.

Recently I started a new story. So I thought this would be a perfect time to write down my process, and see if anyone can relate. Feel free to leave me feedback also.

So, what do I do when I get a new idea? I think, hey, this rarely happens. I should write this down.

Then I’ll made up a beginning, middle, and an end. Just a few points to help me work out where I want the story to go. I might change them up, I might leave them as is. I’ll also jot down all the plot points I might be thinking of into a notebook. That notebook because a mess of words, ideas, reminders, and everything that I’m thinking of that comes under this specific idea. It’s messy, it’s brainstorming, it’s awesome.

With my current story, it was acually just meant to be put on the backburner. But when I realised I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I decided just to write about 500 words of the first scene.

5,000 words later . . . I realised I was in love. And I had to keep writing it.

So I pantsed the first ‘draft’ and just word vomited everything that I wanted to. I skipped scenes, I made it so random, but I had a lot of fun with getting to know the characters and thinking up various situations for them, and of course going back to my notes and trying to vaugely put all of this in order.

Then I finished the ‘draft’. It was about 10,000-15,000 words long, definitely not enough for a novel, but I’d decided it was fun. This whole thing took me the span of a long weekend to do, and I don’t regret it. The pantser in me was free to word vomit as much as possible, and I was happy.

Then I moved onto outlining. I’m going to list how I outline in another blog post, but basically I use a three act structure and go from there. I thought up lots of plot points, and highlighted them in terms of which was a conflict scene, which was a moving plot forward scene, and which was a fun scene. I also thought up beginnings middles and ends to the sub plots and wrote up my character development sheets.This took me maybe a week or two.

Now I’m writing up the first draft, using the outline. The outline is still pretty messy, but it’s cohesive enough for there to be a moderately okay draft written around it. One thing that I’m finding though is I am definitely an underwriter. Either that or I don’t have enough plot points (which I doubt). So here is what I see myself doing very soon.

Finshing the draft (in maybe a month’s time) and realising that it needs to have a lot more words put in (I’m aiming for 50,000. It’s only going to be a small book) and revising it to have a lot more structure and plot points. Probably a lot more research done in order to not only add plot points but also real-ify my story. I MIGHT do a post on what I’m writing about, but I’m a very paranoid person. Then after I am happy with the manuscript, I’ll edit it. Then maybe do a professional edit. And perhaps try and publish it (now we’re looking maybe a year into the future.)

So this is my current writing process. I actually really want to write a post on what I’m writing about, but we’ll just have to see about that one. I’m also considering doing one on my outlining process. Let me know if there are any writing points you would like for me to bring up in the next post, and I’ll make it happen! (i hope).

Until next time.