Intro

Happy March, and welcome to this month’s writing post! This time, I’m going to be talking about my personal writing process. 

And I’ll emphasize the my personal part, too; everyone works differently, and this is one of those things where there really is no one-size-fits-all method. So, if you’re here hoping to get ideas for improving your own process, feel free, but don’t worry if something that I do—or that anyone does, for that matter—doesn’t work or make sense for you. You can take what works and use that, and just forget the rest. Doing that, you’re bound to eventually find what works for you.

So, that aside, let’s get to it.

Brainstorming

Technically, the first step is that I have an idea, but I do that all the time, and they usually aren’t ones that I take seriously enough to write down. (Though I have started trying to make a point of writing them down somewhere whenever I do have one, just in case looking back on it later sparks something.) If I think the idea has potential, I move on to the first real stage: brainstorming. 

This is usually when I really start to think about the plot and characters. When I first have an idea, it’s usually very vague, maybe just a character concept and a couple of scenes; for me, it’s rarely ever the actual plot that comes to me first. I come up with a character and a basic idea of what I want them to do, and then I attempt to build a story around that—usually multiple times before I finally find something that I like and seems like it could work the way I want it to.

For better or worse, this stage usually kind of carries on even into when I’m actually writing the thing. The earliest parts of the first draft are where I try things out and really start to figure out what I want the story to be. A lot of the time, the finished product is completely different from what I originally had in mind—and usually way better, too.

Outlining

Like most writers, I’m not a complete planner or a complete discovery writer, but I always benefit from having an outline to plan out the road ahead and to look to whenever I’m stuck. 

During the outlining phase, I start to think about things like pacing and structure, and how the plot is really going to play out through the scenes. In my experience, these things all feel much more manageable if I look at them from more of a distance rather than trying to figure them out while I’m in the thick of it. 

But, valuable as my outlines are, I rarely ever stick to them completely. A lot of the time, while I’m actually writing a scene and am inside a character’s head, I realize that the character would make a completely different decision from what I had them make in the outline. Other times, I come up with a really cool scene or subplot while I’m writing that wasn’t in the outline at all. When these sorts of things happen, I usually just roll with it, unless it’s super disruptive to the plot, in which case I give it more thought before I decide whether I’m going to go through the trouble of implementing it or not. 

I plan ahead, but I’m okay with deviating from the plan if it seems appropriate. Flexibility is good.

Drafting

Once I feel pretty good about the outline—and admittedly a little before, sometimes—I start doing the actual writing. I go through multiple drafts for almost every project, though the exact number varies—oftentimes a lot—between them. I just work at it until I feel like I have most of the important parts down, then move on to the editing and revising phase. 

This stage, understandably, is the longest and usually takes me a few months, sometimes closer to a year if the book is a particularly long one, to finish. Despite the slowness of this step, this is definitely my favorite part of the process, because this is when the project really starts to take shape and feel like a book rather than just an abstract concept rattling around in my head. It’s not without its frustrations, sure, but my mind has a much easier time writing the action and dialogue than it does figuring out the specifics of how the plot will play out and how I’m going to get from point A to point B in a way that makes sense. By this point, the hard part is mostly done, so I can just enjoy it.

Editing & Revising

While this stage is usually fairly easy for me compared to the others, it sometimes takes some effort to remind myself that, even though I’ve finished the bulk of it, the job isn’t totally done yet. This is an important step, particularly if it’s something that I plan to share with other people.

I usually go about editing by reading the book as a whole for the very first time. (This is also usually where I realize that it’s actually not as much of a wreck as it seemed while I was in the thick of writing it, which is always encouraging.) While I read, I fix any typos, minor inconsistencies (like saying someone’s eyes are green on one page and then saying they’re brown on another, which happens to me all the time…), grammar errors, and tone-related problems that I find, along with any descriptions or explanations that seem too vague or convoluted to be properly understood. 

While I read, I also stay on the lookout for bigger problems, like plot holes and subplots that I started but then forgot about later, leaving them trailing off into oblivion. For the former, I usually have to do a bit of brainstorming to figure out how to fix it, and then how to implement that fix into the story in a natural way. For the latter, I have to decide if I’m going to just cut out any mention of the subplot—which sometimes leads to the need to rewrite some scenes—or if I’m going to try to carry it through to the end, which usually requires adding and rewriting scenes. 

The time that this editing phase takes varies greatly from one project to another, depending on how much work needs to be done on it, but it usually doesn’t take me more than a month. 

Outro

So, that’s my whole process, at least as it currently is. This is bound to change over time as I learn more effective ways of doing things, and especially once I get to the point where I’m working with an editor but, until either of those things happen, this is how I work, and it’s gotten me through every book that I’ve written thus far.