As I’ve been getting back into writing, I’ve been trying to define my process, from something where I sit down and flail at the keyboard, hoping for a good story to come out of it, to something where I can follow a set of steps, especially when I’m starting out, when it feels like I’m rolling a boulder uphill.
But let’s back up a moment and see how we got here.
I’ve always used a notebook to develop and explore ideas. I have far more notebooks and far more ideas in those notebooks than I have finished stories, mostly because ideas fell apart during the development process, usually because I didn’t have a story idea, I had a character idea, or an idea for an isolated scene that lacked the dynamics of a story.
But even with that development process in place, I’ve still written stories that I didn’t like the finished product. Some of these could be fixed during editing. But writing a novel is such a huge undertaking, I quail when I think about needing to do extensive editing to these monsters. I’d rather front load the work and have something closer to what I want it to be in the first draft.
I’ve been reading a lot on writers’ processes recently to see if I could find one that worked for me. I finished Haruki Murakami’s book on being a novelist, though there wasn’t much practical advice in it. I experimented with Dan Harmon’s story circle, writing Codename: Good Candy with this method. I’ve read articles on story structure and found that R.L. Stine’s notebook process is similar to my own. But I didn’t find anything that really felt natural or like it fit me.
It occurred to me as I was reviewing the last novel I read, that if I can identify what doesn’t work for me in stories I read, I should be able to take those aspects of story that I identify and develop them into a process to consciously include those elements in my stories.
To adapt a phrase: I decided to write the kinds of stories I wanted to see in the world. If I couldn’t find a blueprint to follow, I’d just develop my own.
All of this seems elementary or fundamental, but despite taking many writing classes throughout high school and college, as well as writing workshops with professional writers, there’s very little instruction on how to write. The most instructive experiences were a game design workshop with Angel Leigh McCoy and my play writing class in college with Bill Harris.
So, I’ve decided to switch it up a bit for the next few months and, rather than write a What I’ve Been Watching post, I’m going to share with you a bit of insight to How I Write, specifically, those aspects of story that I’ve identified as important to me, and how I’m working to consciously include them into my stories. I’m hoping that, if you are struggling with finding your voice in your stories, I can share with you how I’m finding mine.
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If you came here today to find out what I’ve been watching, you should go see Sketch before it leaves the theater. It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen.
The Chimerical Dark 