READER QUESTIONS! My Writing Process

Hello, Dear Readers! Happy Monday and happy September - I hope that the week and the month are shaping up to be pleasant for you all. Humanity damn well deserves some form of seasonal hot drink (maple rooibos tea in my case), a nice fluffy jumper, some crisp, golden leaves and a run of sunny, frosty days after the year we've had so far. 

In an attempt to start autumn off right, I bring tidings of great joy for US Dear Readers - a Kindle Countdown deal on The Book of Snow & Silence over on Amazon.com. The book's currently 99 cents (sorry, my UK keyboard doesn't have a cent symbol) and will slowly increase in price over the next week, so it's in your interest to grab it as early as possible if you want it. Don't feel too left out, my UK lovelies - there's a similar deal on British Amazon coming up shortly.

Today's post is in response to reader AS, who left a delightful comment on another post, and asked:

"If it isn't too much trouble, then can you please do a blog post on your writing process? How you research, edit and take final decisions etc? And whether you pen the draft first or type it directly?"

I've talked about this a lot in various posts and interviews, but I'm not sure if I've ever collated all my answers in one place - and I always find glimpses into other authors' processes fascinating - so I decided to make this a new post.

A Disclaimer: This is not The One True Way to Write. There is no one true way. This my own method that I've developed over years of hit-and-miss, trial and error experimentation - it's what works for my particular creativity, with my particular routine, utilising my particular brain circuitry. Feel free to try any or all of the methods I talk about, but also to read with interest and then decide that every single thing I do is completely wrong for you. The only 'Right Way' to write is the way that makes you happy and productive. Ok? Ok.

First up, I am a long-hand drafter. 

It's a habit that I developed from 2001, back when I was working as an extremely underpaid and overworked civil servant, scribbling in my notebook during breaks and on the longish bus journey to and from the office. Frankly, there were days when being able to dip into my imaginary world whenever I had a spare moment was the only reason I managed to keep my grip on reality in this one, and this being before smartphones or tablets (because I am ancient, kids), writing in longhand was my only option. 

In 2010 I became a full-time carer for my father - who relied on me to administer his haemodialysis - and decided to try and speed up my writing process by hauling my laptop with me while I was looking after him, and drafting directly into a Word doc. This was a huge mistake: swiftly capturing all my darting thoughts in the form of scribbles and then transcribing those handwritten scribbles into the screen, editing and rethinking along the way, turned out to be a massive part of my drafting process. Without it, the 'first draft' that I produced was a complete mess, painful to read even for me, and torture to edit. I learned my lesson and have been a hardcore notebook collector ever since.

However, there's a downside to writing by hand for hours everyday, and that downside is Repetitive Strain Injury. In order to combat this, I usually write either with a fountain pen (nothing fancy - I lose them too often for that) or a brush pen, as they don't require a strong grip or much pressure to work. I also utilise the Pomodoro Technique, which basically requires that you work flat-out for short periods of time with no interruptions, then take a short break, then work again. 

I try to do four thirty-minute writing springs in the morning (with a five minute break between to bathe my hands in warm water and gently stretch them, as well as to visit the bathroom, refresh my drink, or chuck a toy for my dog) before breaking to take the dog for his mid-day walk and have some lunch. Then, in the afternoon, I re-read and edit everything I typed up the day before, and finally type up my newest scribbles. This technique can yield between 600-6000 words in a day (my record was 9000 words in a day, but my writing hand swelled up and became intensely painful for weeks afterward, and, as above, I learned my lesson and don't push it anymore) and it effectively means that the completed 'first draft' of my novel is actually more like the third or fourth draft.

I'm also a hardcore researcher. 

Most of my novels have been inspired in one way or another by elements of the real world - a setting/landscape, a culture, a piece of folklore or mythology or history. When I get an idea for a story that really grabs me (generally when several tiny idea fragments that have been floating around in my head for a while suddenly collide and become one Big Idea) I pick out one of my extensive collection of notebooks, something that feels like it would suit the main character to use, and label it with the date and my working title.

Then I start reading. First, I'll use the internet - yes, including Wiki - to figure out how much I don't know, which is usually A LOT. Then I'll start visiting all of the local libraries I can get to in order to borrow or order any and every book relating to my story that I can. These might be books, for instance, on the architecture and art of Edo era Japan, or on the landscape and wildlife of Northern India and Tibet, or every version of the Beauty & the Beast story throughout world history. Once I've munched my way through every book that I can get my hands on for free, I will start ordering the ones I a) feel I can't live without and b) can manage to afford on my budget. I'll also start ordering or streaming any documentaries, drama series, music, films, cooking shows, art history programmes... anything related to my research topic. 

If I can afford it (which is sadly not always the case) this is also the stage where I will arrange a research trip or too, to scout out possible locations and take photos, or visit museums or exhibits.

My aim is to immerse myself so completely that I feel like I'm walking around in a cloud of information 24hrs a day. If possible, I want to be *dreaming* about this stuff. And through it all, I'll be writing ideas and information and key details down in the back of my notebook (starting with the last page and working forwards).

At a certain point, I'll feel this sort of internal 'click' and know that my research has reached critical mass and it's time to start writing. This doesn't mean I stop researching or that I know every detail that I'll need to know; it's more that I know enough to start, and I also know that if I don't start at this point, the fragile framework of the story might begin to collapse under the weight of all the facts and figures. Basically, writing is now the full-time job, not research. Once I start drafting/scribbling, I switch to writing in the *front* of the notebook (like a normal person) but I still make research notes or put down ideas for future scenes in the back. When drafting and research meet in the middle, it's time for a new notebook. On average I go through two to three notebooks, as well as a couple of 'refill' pads of paper per book.

For insight into how I make the choices that will turn my ideas about a story and characters into a coherent plot, you can listen to this podcast over on the RLF website (my section starts at about the 15min mark), or read this three-part blog series from my archive. This is actually the step that I struggle with the most, so it's the thing I've talked about the most extensively. 

I'm generally a linear drafter.  

I start at the beginning of a story - what will be the prologue or first chapter for the reader - and work my way through until I get to The End. That's not to say that I'm never struck by blinding inspiration about a scene that's chapters away, or that I don't write those scenes down. It's just that, once I've written it, it'll stay in scribbled form in the back of my notebook until I've worked my way forward in the story to that point, at which point I'll type it up. So far, at least, I've never felt the need to write a whole book, or even most of it, out of sequence, and then put it all together afterwards. It can take me anywhere between six months and eighteen months (again, so far!) to complete a 'first draft'. 

When it comes to editing, I start by going back to pen and paper. Here's an archive post that basically covers the process - but I'll note here that 'optional extra' I mentioned back then, of completely changing the format of the document before I print it out? Is now one of the most vital steps. It actually makes a massive difference to me, because by the time I've completed that draft I've often been staring at certain parts of it for months on end and I've stopped being able to distinguish between 'head story' (which is what I meant to say) and 'page story' (which is what the words arranged on the page actually convey to a reader). I know where every word, comma and piece of dialogue are *supposed to be* on the page, which means I don't notice what is *really there*, even if there are missing words or I've copied and pasted something random in. By rearranging all those words, commas and formating choices, I make it much easier to come back to the manuscript with a genuinely fresh eye. 

I like to change the portrait format of the document to landscape and then set the text into two columns so that it resembles the page layout that I'll often get from a copy-editor/proofreader. 

Then I amend my line spacing (from double to single) and reset the font (from Times New Roman into something that's sans serif, like Calibri) and the text size (from 12 pt down to 11 pt, uusually). 

Coincidentally, these changes can also potentially save me a chunk of paper in the printing, bringing a 300 page ms down to around 150 (yes, it's that dramatic).

So that's my (current) writing process. And that's also where I'll leave today's post. I hope that it was useful or at least interesting, AS - and anyone else who is reading. Do you have a writing process, or are you still experimenting? Do you have any tips or tricks to share? If so, sound off in the comments, and in the meantime, have a great week, muffins!

IT'S A MYSTERY

Hello, lovely readers! Long time no read and so on - very sorry about that. I can't really promise to do better in future, since having a job with regular office hours and a lengthy commute by train is definitely having an impact on the amount of spare time and brain power that I have for blogging. At least, if I want to get any actual-book-writing done (which hopefully most of you would prefer I focus on).

There is cool and exciting news that I ought to be able to share in the foreseeable future, but for now I have to keep totally quiet about on pain of getting a sorrowful and disappointed email from my agent or editor, or both. So in the meantime I thought this post - which was inspired by a tweet that turned out to be unexpectedly popular - might be amusing.

I'm currently working on my tenth novel since becoming a published writer (probably around the twelfth or thirteenth one if we're counting the ones that will reside forever in a drawer in my desk). This book is uncontracted so I can't really talk about it, except to say that it's got selkies and sea magic in it. Now get a load of this:

I have written and discarded no less than six different opening chapters for this book.

That's around 12,000 words of work that I earnestly poured my effort into and which now grace the recycle bin.

I have never, ever had to do this before - not for any other book I've written.

Let no writer convince you, my muffins, that they know how to write a book. In fact, one of the biggest differences I've noticed between the fresh and dewy just-starting-out unpublished or debut writers and the ones like me who've been hacking away at the literary undergrowth for a decade or so is that us professional hackers will admit we're never going to to figure out this writing malarkey. If a pro-writer tries to tell you that they've figured out a reliable formula for creating a book, then I can 100% assure you that they're trying to sell you something, and the something will be a book. Usually a book with the words 'How to', 'Bestseller', 'Secret' and 'Novel' in the title.

I mean, buy it anyway, if it looks fun, but don't be fooled. How To Write Any Kind of Book At All: It's A Complete Mystery To Me, I Don't Know What to Tell You is what the title ought to be.

And just to illustrate this point, here are the six discarded opening lines of my tenth manuscript, in no particular order:

1) "I always loved the water."

2) "It starts with the taste of apples, sweet and acidic, on the back of my tongue."

3) "I inhaled in as the Whisperers had taught me, slowly and deeply – one, two, three, four, five – and tried to ignore the stench of goats." 

4) "I was born Her Royal Highness Theoai Herim, the Golden One, eldest daughter of Queen Theoan, and Crown Princess of Yamarr."

5)  "Segemassa lay quietly beneath the sharp ivory horns of the rising Warrior’s moon."

6) "The sea voyage to my new home took nearly eight weeks."

And now I'm onto the seventh, which I shan't share because I have a superstitious fear that will jinx it. Wish me luck with this one, darlings!

TURNING IDEAS INTO PLOTS: Part Two

So you've had this idea for a story. 

Chances are the idea is incomplete and actually has a few separate pieces to it. Mostly my ideas – the ones that spark the desire to start a new book – come with a vague sense of how it all starts, a couple of really strong, hit-me-in-the-head scenes that probably fit somewhere in the middle, and then a vague sense of how it ends. Your ideas might come with the beginning perfectly formed and no end, or a perfect end and no middle scenes. But whatever, you have to try and figure out how to fit these events together into a plot. How to bridge the gaps between them in a way that makes sense, that is entertaining to read, that is worth writing.

At this stage, some authors recommend making character or story collages, where you get yourself a huge pile of magazines and cut out any images - of people or locations or phrases - that 'sing' to you, as being something to do with your idea. You stick them all to a big sheet of paper and somehow seeing everything like that acts like a giant magnet for other ideas to start zipping out of your brain and attaching themselves to the original idea.

Some writers like to use index cards or bullet points to list everything that they know about characters, setting, story, mood. They find that as they write these down, more and more details materialise in their heads, until their bullet point list is twice as long, or their stack of cards twice as thick as they expected.

I think the really important thing at this point is to PIN THOSE SUCKERS DOWN. Otherwise tiny details can sometimes slither away from you and it's really hard to get them back. What's more, the very act of writing down your ideas makes them feel more concrete and get-at-able. Often as you begin to write them they will expand right there on the page before your eyes, drawing other ideas from your subconscious and weaving them in, until your snippet of an argument suddenly has three compelling characters, or your image of a setting has a tragic situation and two more settings nested within. It’s magic!

So, now you have a whole *bunch* of exciting ideas, loosely linked, that makes your gizzards positively tingle with excitement. Great! Well done. Now for the bad news: this scatter of ideas still doesn't actually make a plot.

A plot needs to be more than a series of events that happen one after another. There needs to be a shape, rising tension, rising stakes. The story needs to move through events of physical and emotional and mental significance (if it's going to be a really good book, I mean). Sometimes when you've pinned all your ideas down you still won't feel you have enough stuff to make a story. Other times it all looks like way too much.

This is where my diagrams come in. Tada!

A disclaimer here: this is the way *I* think of plots. You might like a square, or a circle, or a list, or a corkboard covered in neat lines of post-its. But fitting my puzzle pieces into this shape works for me. You might find that although following this exact method does not fit for you, trying it shows you the way you DO like to work. Anyway, let me 'splain. 

FIRST PLOT EVENT: This is pretty self-evident. It's the event that kicks off the story proper. It might not be the first thing the reader sees, though. Sometimes a story starts off by showing the character's world, illustrating the most important characters in their life or establishing their ambitions or deepest wishes. Leading up to a dramatic or significant event – as in The Fellowship of the Ring, where we're introduced to the idyllic Shire and Frodo's well-hidden longing for adventure – allows us to understand what is at stake for the protagonist when the first plot event occurs.

Some writing books will tell you that you must cut straight to the action. And for some genres or some particular stories, that’s OK to do. But it’s not vital, and there are many books which do no such thing. What is vital is that you begin with something RELEVANT to the story, something which will show its significance when you light the fuse and let the plot explode. 

CHARACTER TAKES ACTION TO CHANGE COURSE OF PLOT: A little more tricky, this one. Usually, after the first major story event the character will react with shock, fear, disbelief. They might refuse to accept what's happened, struggle desperately to get away from the new character or place that is threatening their normality. However at some point most characters that are strong enough to be a main character will get a grip and attempt to take control of their situation. Sometimes it backfires, sometimes it works but triggers further events.

In any case, this is the moment when the character first begins to truly affect the plot and it's usually an important moment in the story. Using The Fellowship of the Ring again, this is moment when Frodo, having reached the safety of the Rivendell, and having been given a viable chance to step out of this life-or-death adventure, instead steps forward and volunteers to take the Ring to Mordor. 

MAJOR DISASTER OR SETBACK: The events triggered by the interaction of the main character's choices and the plot now reach a critical point. Things might seem to be going really well – but at the moment when success seems assured, disaster strikes and changes the course of the story again. Often the reader will have seen this setback coming all along. Sometimes even the characters can see it. But they're powerless to prevent it, either because of an essential flaw in their own character or strategy (established prior to this, of course) or because the forces of opposition are overwhelming.

For example, in Disney's The Little Mermaid, this is where Ursula the Sea Witch sees that Ariel and the Prince are falling in love, realises her plan isn’t going to work, and casts a spell to enchant the Prince and make her his own. Ariel wakes up full of joy, goes running off to see her Prince, and finds him suddenly engaged to another woman. Noooooo!  

THE PLATEAU OF AWFULNESS: I read this term in a writing book and it's stuck with me. This is when, in the midst of the fallout from that great disaster, something even worse (and often contrasting to the main disaster) happens. It's the part of the story where things literally cannot get any worse. There's no way back. It's do or die. Think back to the events at the end of The Matrix, where most of the crew of the ship have been slaughtered by a traitor and Neo is stuck in the Matrix fighting (and losing) against Agent Smith. Then the alarm on the ship goes off: a killer 'squid' is approaching. It starts ripping the ship apart and the only way the crew can save themselves is to set off the EMP. But if they do that, Neo will die.

The attack of the killer machine contrasts beautifully with the main disaster – Neo's battle against the Agent – because while Neo is a blur of action, running and fighting for his life, the crew are forced into stillness, silence and inaction, waiting for Neo to get out of Matrix, unable to fight for their own lives. All their hopes rest with him. In some stories the PoA might be emotional in contrast to an action Major Setback. In others it might be a new attack, but from an unexpected direction. In books which are totally on their game, it could be about both action and emotion. The important thing is that this is where the character is forced to throw everything they have at the obstacles that face them. Their last hope has gone. In despair, fury, new determination or sudden revelation, they are now propelled forward to the final events of the story. 

LAST PLOT EVENT: Hang on a minute, you say! There are only FOUR points on that diamond! How can there be five points on your list? Well, the last plot event is where everything comes full circle. It's where you fulfil the promises that you made to the reader at the beginning and the story comes to a natural close. Just like with the last plot event, this might not be the actual last scene, but it's the last point in the story where events are still in flux. Further chapters may tie up loose ends, but shouldn't significantly alter what has occurred in the last plot event. This is the scene where Trinity kisses an unconscious Neo and tells him that she loves him – and he responds by proving he is The One and destroying Agent Smith at the same moment that Morpheus presses the EMP button and kills the squid that is tearing the ship apart. It's when when Triton takes pity on his daughter and transforms her into a human for good and she is reuinited with Prince Eric.

Now, as I said above, not all stories are going to fit into this exact pattern – and that is fine! – but it's a good place to start. The simple structure makes it very easy to see how events you might already have in mind should be spaced out, and again, the act of placing the ideas you do have in this form can often draw other ideas out of your subconscious as you realise that if there’s a Plateau of Awfulness here, then surely the best event to follow it would be this or this... See if the events you have in your head fit these definitions in any sense. Perhaps the scenes you've got are the lead-ins or sequels to such events? 

Open your mind to the most interesting ways that things could play out. If you can fill in three or four of the points on the diagram, even if it turns out you have three Major Setbacks and two PoAs, you're well on your way to having a complete story. And if in the process you realise that diagramming works better for you if you break your story down into six main plot events, or that you prefer a circle, or a line of Post-Its, then hurray! You’re already beginning to discover your own individual plotting style.

Stay tuned to this bat channel for the next instalment of our exciting (look, *I* find it exciting, OK?) plotting workshop, in which we shall discuss no less a person than Cinderella and there will be many more diagrams (yay!).

TURNING IDEAS INTO PLOTS: Part One

Dear Readers, today I'm beginning the process of posting all the refreshed and revised content which I made for the Patreon here on the blog. So let’s talk PLOT. 

What is a plot? Do you find them? Make them? And how do they WORK? 

 

First up, I’m going to say that most of us really need to calm down when it comes to plot. There’s a lot of advice out there, and quite a bit of it contradicts most of the rest, and almost everyone offering advice seems convinced that if you don’t create a plot using the exact right formula then rocks shall fall and everybody will die. That sort of thinking? Is not useful. At all.

When I cast my mind back and start remembering how much I used to stress out about not doing things 'properly' or 'the right way', and how I used to get stuck in the first three chapters and just revise them until they died, or struggle my way to the middle and then freak out because I had idea where to go next... honestly, a cold sweat breaks out on my brow. Writers need to think and talk about this. I definitely did. But I’m convinced people so often get so bogged down in different schools of thought about what a plot is, arguments on shape or function (three acts? Five? SIXTEEN??) that it becomes the opposite of helpful. 

This is Part One of my three part workshop on plots, plots, wonderful plots. It’s designed to be helpful to both beginning and more experienced writers, and hopefully by the end you will feel inspired and motivated, not confused, panicked, or like fleeing to Tibet to herd Yaks.

To begin we need to go back to that classic and much groaned over question: Where do you get your ideas?

The standard response to that one is: ideas are easy to come by, it's execution that counts. But what I think those writers are really asking, a lot of the time, is actually more like: How do you turn an idea into a story? How do you know what happens next? How do you fill a whole book up with all that STUFF? 

I get it. Really.

Most writers that I've talked to or read books by say that when they *get* a story idea, it's usually actually the result of two or more little idea fragments spinning around in their head frantically until they all collide and POOF! Suddenly there's a story there. Only it's not a complete story. This is what you need to recognise. With some notable exceptions, stories, characters, plots, settings – none of it appears in the brain fully formed. You might get some sort of inking of how things kick off, or maybe one or two vital scenes from the middle, or a faint impression of how it should end. Or just a vivid image of a certain character or place. Or all of these things (lucky you). 

It's vital to realise at this point that those impressions? Aren't set in stone. They're giving you hints about what you want your story to be ABOUT, hints on the themes or particular twists you want to explore. The fact that you clearly see a fearless heroine fighting a Samurai in the middle of a bleak orange desert could mean that you want to write about an ass-kicking girl's adventures, or that you want to write about the desert, or a lonely Samurai who wanders across the world, or that you're interested in having a romance where the couple fights each other with swords for fun. The important thing could be the tiny snatch of dialogue you get where they taunt each other about bad technique, or the colour of the sand, or the general bleak tone of the thing.

OR NONE OF THE ABOVE.

This is your brain opening doors and showing you possibilities. Glimpses of what could be. They're telling you your characters *could* be these kinds of people, or your world might be like this. They're inviting you to think long and hard, make choices, sink into the mind of the people whose story you need to tell, to immerse yourself in their world. They're inviting you to walk through as many of those doors as you like, have a curious wander around, then either move in or walk away and close the door behind you.

Do you have an idea for a beginning, a couple of middle parts and an end that have nothing to do with each other and you have no idea how to get from one to another? That's fine. It's way too early to panic and give up. It might be that you'll be working things out as you go along, just writing until you hit one of those key scenes. It might be that you never actually write any of those middle scenes because by the time you get to the middle you realise an event like that simply couldn't happen in the world you've created, or that your character just wouldn't act that way.

The same with endings. You could be like J K Rowling and write the final scene seven books in advance and stick to it (yikes) or you could be like me and aim for that final scene as a guide but usually end up realising the actual events are all wrong, and it's just one or two things, like a character's feelings, or the location or mood that you need. You might even be like Leah Clifford and have no IDEA how it's going to end (she's a better man than I am, Gunga Din).

This point, where you have the compelling image and some odd bits and pieces of a story is usually the point where beginning writers plunge in and start writing, carried away with the desire to see What Happens Next. If that works for you, fine. But a lot of the emails I get seem to come from people who've had this AWESOME IDEA OMG and started writing right away and then got completely lost after a few chapters. Now they don't know if this means the idea was wrong to begin with and they should give up and move onto the Shiny New Idea... or what. 

So, in the next post, we're going to get down to the nitty-gritty of how to actually make a plot that will allow you to keep writing the thing you want to write. This will include examining a couple of ways to work out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, including the use of a plot diagram that I partially stole and partially made up to stop me drowning in my own ideas. 

Would you like the next piece of the workshop (including rinky-dinky plot diagram) this week? Let me know in the comments, muffins, and I'll try to find time to transfer it across and fix the formatting (what is with the formatting on Blogger?).