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My writing technique (so far)
A couple of people on my DW have been talking about their writing techniques. As I’ve recently left a couple of long comments on Reddit about mine, from the lofty heights of a total of 110,000 words in two years on a third-draft-stage novella and unfinished novel, I’m posting them here. (Mostly because they were to people who were in the same place I was before the switch flipped and I was able to actually produce a coherent story, not because I’m an expert. And I want to keep them for reference as I’ve posted variations of them several times.)
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In the same place as you [the OP had characters, setting, unconnected events and nothing cohering it], what worked for me was a massive amount of research—I’m writing fantasy based on early modern Europe—and I kept the characters and location in mind as I read books and articles on subjects that seemed like they’d relate. Little bits of info here and there started to gather, and I eventually had something shaped vaguely like a story.
While I was doing that I was also attempting to structure the story. I’m on my phone right now so it’s difficult to link, but if you go to my comment history you’ll see the ginormous comment I left in r/FantasyWriters yesterday about how I turned the giant mass of characters, setting, and events into a plot and an outline.
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The ginormous comment I mentioned, in response to someone who was asking how ADHD people structured their giant mass of ideas into a thing they could start writing.
ADHDer here, 79K words into my WIP and near the end.
How I did it—and this wasn’t planned, just what happened—was to first read a bunch of story structure books, mentally attempting to slot my characters and events into them and failing. No coherent story came out of that, but I had a bunch of ideas and possibilities
Then I found the One Page Novel structure, which allowed me to think about organizing my events in a different order, mostly backwards, starting from the end state and working to the beginning state of the world and characters. Still didn’t have the story, though it was beginning to come together.
Then I worked through John Truby’s The Elements of Story, creating character webs and doing his other exercises. Still didn’t have the story, but I had a stronger idea of characters and events and thematic elements, and how they might slot together.
Then I wrote everything down on notecards and spent some time arranging them in order. Now it looked like a story, and seeing the events and people like that gave ideas for connecting them and filling in the blanks.
I put that into Scrivener, and it looked like an outline. One with big STUFF HAPPENS HERE labels, but hey.
I was able to start drafting then. 1/3 of the way through I got blocked and realized I needed to re-outline the rest and think it through. I also bought Plottr at the time because shiny new toys keep me interested (thank you ADHD). I did that, wrote more. 3/4 of the way from the end, I realized I needed to do that again as things and motivations and so on had been refined and slightly drifted or been subject to A Better Idea, and thus my original plans wouldn’t work. I did that and realized I was actually 2/3 of the way through, but momentum has built up and I am now on track to finish soon, with no more reorganization aside from a scene or two.
I have been paying no conscious attention to story structure while actively plotting and drafting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there—the early mental work of reading and thinking about it means that my subconscious is working on it because when I reread I can see the bones of structure and pacing. I plan to pay conscious attention while rewriting, editing and overall tightening it up.
I’ve found a lot of my process happens subconsciously and my job is to feed my subconscious with the raw material: structure, theme, motivation for the bones of the story, and a ton of research and reading in history and anthropology for the meat of it (I’m writing fantasy in a world loosely based on early modern Europe). Once some sort of critical level is reached, it spills out.
This has been a long, involved process but I think that—for me—every part was necessary. If I skipped the story structure stuff, I wouldn’t have the rhythm the story right. If I skipped the One Page Novel stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to work out how the end of the story was created out of the beginning. Had I not done Truby, I wouldn’t have a good sense of how and why my characters fit together and worked off each other. And had I not also read a bunch of books and articles in various subjects, my world would be flat and dull, and the political events driving the story wouldn’t fit.
Your process will almost certainly be different, but I hope what you get out of this is that you need to try all sorts of stuff to figure out how your creative brain ticks, and be open to the idea that it might be a combo of things. Do you need fallow time to let your back brain simmer? Do you need to find a formula that clicks with you? Do you need to find a friend who will sit and nod and say “And then?” as you tell them the story you have so far? Will you have to write a detailed outline and then throw it away before you can draft? Will you have to write it backwards or out of order, the big set piece scenes first and fit the connecting ones in later?
Or will it be different for every project?
_____________________
And one more comment to another ADHD writer asking for tips.
I say this on every ADHD writing thread: what works for me is regular exercise, snd also exercise right before writing. I put on a curated playlist of music that I only listen to while writing this project, get on the treadmill and let my mind wander while thinking about the bit I need to write next. After 5-10 minutes ideas start coming, which I dictate to my email app, and when I’ve got enough ideas and am tired of thinking and not writing, I send the email to myself, get off the treadmill, and go write.
Regularly scheduled times to write can help flip you into Writing Mode, as can curating a playlist like I mentioned above that’s only played with this project: putting it on tells your brain It’s Time To Write.
___________
In the same place as you [the OP had characters, setting, unconnected events and nothing cohering it], what worked for me was a massive amount of research—I’m writing fantasy based on early modern Europe—and I kept the characters and location in mind as I read books and articles on subjects that seemed like they’d relate. Little bits of info here and there started to gather, and I eventually had something shaped vaguely like a story.
While I was doing that I was also attempting to structure the story. I’m on my phone right now so it’s difficult to link, but if you go to my comment history you’ll see the ginormous comment I left in r/FantasyWriters yesterday about how I turned the giant mass of characters, setting, and events into a plot and an outline.
————-
The ginormous comment I mentioned, in response to someone who was asking how ADHD people structured their giant mass of ideas into a thing they could start writing.
ADHDer here, 79K words into my WIP and near the end.
How I did it—and this wasn’t planned, just what happened—was to first read a bunch of story structure books, mentally attempting to slot my characters and events into them and failing. No coherent story came out of that, but I had a bunch of ideas and possibilities
Then I found the One Page Novel structure, which allowed me to think about organizing my events in a different order, mostly backwards, starting from the end state and working to the beginning state of the world and characters. Still didn’t have the story, though it was beginning to come together.
Then I worked through John Truby’s The Elements of Story, creating character webs and doing his other exercises. Still didn’t have the story, but I had a stronger idea of characters and events and thematic elements, and how they might slot together.
Then I wrote everything down on notecards and spent some time arranging them in order. Now it looked like a story, and seeing the events and people like that gave ideas for connecting them and filling in the blanks.
I put that into Scrivener, and it looked like an outline. One with big STUFF HAPPENS HERE labels, but hey.
I was able to start drafting then. 1/3 of the way through I got blocked and realized I needed to re-outline the rest and think it through. I also bought Plottr at the time because shiny new toys keep me interested (thank you ADHD). I did that, wrote more. 3/4 of the way from the end, I realized I needed to do that again as things and motivations and so on had been refined and slightly drifted or been subject to A Better Idea, and thus my original plans wouldn’t work. I did that and realized I was actually 2/3 of the way through, but momentum has built up and I am now on track to finish soon, with no more reorganization aside from a scene or two.
I have been paying no conscious attention to story structure while actively plotting and drafting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there—the early mental work of reading and thinking about it means that my subconscious is working on it because when I reread I can see the bones of structure and pacing. I plan to pay conscious attention while rewriting, editing and overall tightening it up.
I’ve found a lot of my process happens subconsciously and my job is to feed my subconscious with the raw material: structure, theme, motivation for the bones of the story, and a ton of research and reading in history and anthropology for the meat of it (I’m writing fantasy in a world loosely based on early modern Europe). Once some sort of critical level is reached, it spills out.
This has been a long, involved process but I think that—for me—every part was necessary. If I skipped the story structure stuff, I wouldn’t have the rhythm the story right. If I skipped the One Page Novel stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to work out how the end of the story was created out of the beginning. Had I not done Truby, I wouldn’t have a good sense of how and why my characters fit together and worked off each other. And had I not also read a bunch of books and articles in various subjects, my world would be flat and dull, and the political events driving the story wouldn’t fit.
Your process will almost certainly be different, but I hope what you get out of this is that you need to try all sorts of stuff to figure out how your creative brain ticks, and be open to the idea that it might be a combo of things. Do you need fallow time to let your back brain simmer? Do you need to find a formula that clicks with you? Do you need to find a friend who will sit and nod and say “And then?” as you tell them the story you have so far? Will you have to write a detailed outline and then throw it away before you can draft? Will you have to write it backwards or out of order, the big set piece scenes first and fit the connecting ones in later?
Or will it be different for every project?
_____________________
And one more comment to another ADHD writer asking for tips.
I say this on every ADHD writing thread: what works for me is regular exercise, snd also exercise right before writing. I put on a curated playlist of music that I only listen to while writing this project, get on the treadmill and let my mind wander while thinking about the bit I need to write next. After 5-10 minutes ideas start coming, which I dictate to my email app, and when I’ve got enough ideas and am tired of thinking and not writing, I send the email to myself, get off the treadmill, and go write.
Regularly scheduled times to write can help flip you into Writing Mode, as can curating a playlist like I mentioned above that’s only played with this project: putting it on tells your brain It’s Time To Write.
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(I am in awe of your productivity and how you can write so quickly: I'm much more like