What’s Your Writing Process? :D

[whaley]

This is sorta vague, but I’ve been wondering what y’all’s processes are. How fast do you go from daydreaming to writing? Do you daydream at all? Do you write a first draft real quick and edit afterward? Or are you on the slower side, editing as you go? Ooo, and do you have a writing ritual?

I’m one of those people who nit-picks over every sentence throughout my first draft. XD In fact, sometimes I’ll only write 300 words in an hour. O.o But I’m pretty proud of my work afterwards. I always have the characters planned out, but the outline is short. I get a vague idea of the plot, and start from there. So, a plantser, maybe? I write best on my comfy swivel chair, with my pretty wallpaper and music 🙂

“Everything is a mountain”

[Koshka]

@whalekeeper

Ooo, ouch. My processes tend to change per book.

But over all, I’d say:

1. I start with day dreaming, which usually starts with a random character then progresses to world building.
2. When an idea gets lodged in my head, I may write a character sketch or two, and day dream untill a plot solidifies and character archs become complex if not complete.
3.  I then start a first draft and pretend to write, when in truth I’m still mostly dreaming while endlessly editing what little I have written. And research, which is really me just using my books as an excuse to lose myself in whatever new information catches my fancy.
4. What happens next I don’t know yet. I’ve been stuck in stage 3 for going on four years now.

Thus the ‘ouch’, and thus the whole reason I joined Kingdom Pen.

*Sigh*

I usually write best wherever I can find a quiet place which isn’t completely silent.

First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
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[whaley]

@koshka

Oh, that’s no biggie, *waves hand* everyone does that. You have to start with daydreaming anyway, and if you’re here, that means progress 😀 And to be honest, most of my projects are just daydreams as well.

That’s good. Quiet is important.

Here’s a random question, since this topic isn’t catching on: if you could match your characters with animals, what would they be? Do they have multiple animals, if they dramatically change throughout the story? 😛

“Everything is a mountain”

[Rose Everdeen]

@whalekeeper

Ooohhh fun topic!

How fast do you go from daydreaming to writing? Do you daydream at all? Do you write a first draft real quick and edit afterward? Or are you on the slower side, editing as you go? Ooo, and do you have a writing ritual?

Well, I daydream a LONG time. Usually, I’m daydreaming about a plot while writing a different book, so I have enough time. I’ll be thinking about it, discussing it with writer friends, and scribbling down ideas for months.

By the time I’m done with that, I can usually outline it in a few days because I already have pretty much the whole plot and all the characters.

After that, I start drafting, which means first making a detailed outline of each chapter with scripted dialogue, and then drafting it. I draft fairly quickly, though it still takes me a couple of months to get through all of it.

I don’t edit at all, I just write all of it in one go without any thought as to whether it’s comprehensible. Sometimes I’ll even leave placeholders for myself like (DOES THIS MAKE SENSE) so I can find my worries in future.

After that, I let it sit for a few months while I bounce back to a different project. Then I’ll read through it, annotate, and plan the revisions. That usually takes a briefer daydreaming period, and then I start with revisions!

I don’t have much of a process for that yet, since I’m in the middle of my first time XD But so far I’m enjoying it!

[MineralizedWritings]

@whalekeeper

Daydreaming is a lot of fun lol.

How far are you into writing your current WIP?

Idk what to call my writing process, it’s weird. I just like describing stuff, I could write without a plot of somebody gave me an idea for a scene. That was my problem with writing for a long time. I would get an idea in my head of a person and general situation, but no plot or character growth. Them I’d just like wright whatever they were doing. So yeah. I wanted to be a writer and enjoyed it but for the life of me couldn’t come up with a plot. I prayed about it and one day an idea came to my head and now I have my current WIP. Usually I’ll come up with an interaction between two characters and the general mood I want them each to give off and just start writing. I feel like making dialogue is how I get to know my Characters best.

"And so I left this world just as I had entered it. Confused."

[MineralizedWritings]

@Whalekeeper

My oc Tauren would be a pigeon. He has a pet pigeon in the story. It’s basically the suicide bird they send down a mine/well to see if it’s safe (if it comes out alive it’s safe) but he befriended it. Not sure about my other characters.

 

What animals would your characters be?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by MineralizedWritings.

"And so I left this world just as I had entered it. Confused."

[Koshka]

@whalekeeper

Uh, hehe…my characters are animals. Zlatan and Vulkasin are wolves, Wilkins and Daithí are foxes, Mikkel and Cecilia are small wild cats (A Scottish wild cat, and a sand cat).

First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
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[Anonymous]

@whalekeeper. My writing process? Hmm…mostly daydreaming. XDXDXD But…hmm…my writing process…I feel like it’s different for each book. XDXDXD But here’s the typical, although sometimes it changes, haha. XD

1. Characters! Yes…characters often come to me first.

2. THEME! The messages of books are very important to me, and considering each of my books has a message, I always love coming up with a message

3. RESEARCH!!!!! Being a Historical-Fiction writer, this is VERY, VERY important to the writing process. 😉

4. A bit of plotting??? Listen…I’m more of a pantser. XDXDXD But I have been trying to have a small outline, lol. XDXDXD

5. More Research! Listen…being a History nerd…I can get absolutely LOST in the research, but more research never hurt anyone. 😉

Uhm…I can’t think of anything else. XDXDXD But I will say that I don’t have a certain spot that I write. Thank goodness, I can write almost anywhere. (something I am very thankful for! XD) Quiet, loud, somewhat loud, and anything in between…I can write. Bedroom, living room, kitchen, other houses, the car…it’s just something I’m very thankful for. XDXDXD I also listen to music a lot when I write, so more sound probably makes me write better, lol. XDXDXD

And what animal would they be!? UGHHHHHHH!!!! THAT’S SO HARD!!!! XDXDXD

And my characters change SO MUCH!!!! (well…redemption is one of my favorite themes, lol)

I have no clue! XDXDXD

[whaley]

Ack, did I really not reply to this?? *Facepalm* XD

@rose-everdeen Yes, the process of an art is always fascinating 😉 Wow, you’ve definitely thought through it! I never would have guessed it was your first time, from the way you described it. Sounds organized. Is it a long project?

(AND YES, PLACEHOLDERS DO MAKE SENSE XD I actually have ridiculous notes in my docs that are hilarious to read. Useful, but I always goof off as much as I can.)

@mineralizedwritings I started brainstorming my newest WIP about… eh… a month ago? The doc’s 12k, although about 2k of that is outlining. It’s feeling pretty good, especially because I just discovered a new character!

I know, that’s often how your writing starts – without any particular direction. That’s great! Dialogue is awesome. And I love the mining idea.

Pigeon 😛 I like that. Dirty gray, soft, a balance between quirky and sad. It’s got that aesthetic.

Not sure about my latest characters. Too early to tell. But in my Whale Keepers WIP, Alfonso is an albatross (always flying over the sea, which signifies emotion), Christopher a panther (always frustrated and out-of-place), and Sadie a capybara (just because!).

@koshka Oh right! Should have remembered that. Good names. I almost feel like you’re aiming for a trilogy, because you’ve got three pairs of animals. Is it a six POV story, or is only one character in the spotlight?

@freedomwriter76 Coolness! Characters and theme come to me first, too – which is a good thing. Plus the whole writing-anywhere-and-everywhere thing. I can if I’m writing in a notebook, but not on the computer. Oo oo oo, have you ever gotten the privilege of writing in a bookshop, a library, or like some really writerly-bookworm spot?

Redemption… YuS *Fistbump*

So here’s a question. when you do HisFic, do you stick real close to actual history, or is it more of researching for the sake of aesthetics? Like, I have a story that draws a lot of aesthetic from the 1930s (with some Victorian for certain characters), but I don’t follow the facts at all, because it’s virtually a different dimension XD Is it different for you?

“Everything is a mountain”

[Koshka]

@whalekeeper

You’re fine! I do like trying to figure out how they would look if they were human though, but that gets confusing, so anyway.

You guessed correctly: I am writing a trilogy! In each book I have a slightly more central MC and a second MC, so some of them do get a bigger spotlight, although it may not be very noticeable in the finished draft.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Koshka. Reason: Ato-correct needs to be pummeled

First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
Fork the Gork

[MineralizedWritings]

@whalekeeper

Discovering new characters is so much fun XP

Thanks! Although I can’t take credit, I wanted him to have a pet, the pigeon was my sisters idea.

I love albatrosses 😃

Wow.. capybara…  What a literal mood 😂

 

"And so I left this world just as I had entered it. Confused."

[Author]

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