My Writing Style
In a previous post, I spoke about Plotting vs. Pantsing. I mentioned at the end of it that I use a combination when writing my short stories.
At first, I would have said I was 100% a plotter. But then I did some research… and I stand corrected. There are so many different levels in the spectrum of Plotting and Pantsing. And again, far be it from me to criticize anyone’s methods (especially if they’re out there selling stories or books).
I’ve been asked a seemingly simple question a couple of times now by friends, family, and members of my writing group: How do I write? In sharing my process, I hope that it works for someone else as well, and they can enjoy the creative process as much as I do.
I always begin by making a list of scenes with a few words of description next to each entry. At this stage, the list is very bare bones, just bullet point reminders. This gives me the pivotal points of a story. Writing out these simple phrases or notes as scenes helps me determine the projected length of the story as well—for me, a list of seven scenes would be about 4,000 words. While not always accurate, it has been more than not, and lets me know what I need to plan out to reach the number of words for the call to which I am trying to submit.
In the beginning, not all plot details are sorted out. That comes later during the creative and highly enjoyable process of filling in those scenes. I take those few words and make them into a conglomerate of ideas. I list out all the information I want in that scene; I use half sentences and disjointed dialogue. I love this part; I have fun with it and let my mind run wild filling the space between with ideas. This part is more like a scene-focused stream of consciousness exercise. I know where it begins and where it must end in order to connect to the next scene. Also during this stage, some plot problems might be discovered and corrected, which might have me going back and adding some detail to a previous scene, or deleting a few lines that contradict a later point.
The second draft means taking all that information and disjointed dialogue and writing it out into complete sentences. At this stage, just the sentences are important, so it still isn’t pretty by any means. Often, sentence structures get repeated (consistently and accidentally) for entire paragraphs. But it tells the story and hammers out a sensical flow from beginning to end.
When in the midst of the writing, I’ll also be able add anything that comes to mind as I am stringing together the prose. Sometimes, I’ll just write out a full dialogue exchange, with no tags or break points. Then I’ll go back and fill in who said what and add movements or context. Any remaining plot issues are corrected at this stage as well. (As a side note, most often my first drafts have been third person, present tense, and I generally, or lately I should say, I write in first person past. So, it’s also during this stage that everything is converted to the proper tense and point of view.)
The next read-through involves a lot of cleaning up, which makes up my third draft. Here I take the time to fix sentence structure and remove lots of extraneous words and phrases (generally stuff that is repeated or will need to be taken out and used in another chapter somewhere else). Once this draft is finished, the story has reached my minimum threshold for calling it ready to be read by others (but not necessarily ready to send into a publisher for an open call).
As a third draft, the story gets re-read several times (by myself, or by a few others who’ve agreed to beta-read the story and give me their thoughts). Either way—by the third draft, it’s a story.
My style certainly has a creative aspect, but it may not work for everyone. I find it useful to know where the story is headed; it’s what allows for that in-between creative process. I’ve gotten so much more writing accomplished sticking the method I described above than before I came to it.
I know I’m not giving any ground-breaking writing advice here, but thanks for reading, and heck, if you give it a shot and it works for you, I’d love to know.