This is how I do it...
I am not an expert in many things, so what I recount here is not to
be taken as my giving some authorative advice on anything (my type
o's should assure you of that) but what I have written below are
just my my musings on my process of writing.
Although I have been writing on and off for 30 years (My first series of books being a hand illustrated collection on graph paper, stapeled together - what one might call self publishing) - it is only now that I have learnt how it is that I write.
I have found the cloud invaluable, and also the crits which I have managed to scrape the pennies together for, and my main issue has been to remove the back story from my current story. This is the issue people flag up again and again, and they are right - or rather, they are right but I am wrong, in that I had always thought that I was showing people a finished piece - but I wasn't.
What I do I realize, and what works for me, is to write everything at first. To write every drop of back story into the narrative as it's told - but what I have learnt is not to think that is the story. It isn't, it's the roots of the story, and like roots, there are hundered of strands all slowly coming together. What I then do, is go back and decide if each piece of back story is needed to make the moment work, or has it served it's purpose already. By this I mean, I know the back story, I have worked it out, it has coloured the plot by is it's existence, so do we need it, or just the effect it's caused. Like a stone dropped in a pool, you need the ripples, not the stone.
Each edit is a quest to whittel away the back story, while understanding what it does to the front story ( if that's even a phrase) - so that what remains is crucial to the plot, entertaning and informative, but not cleggy. I think I have, in my most finished one, reduced four pages of the story of my MC and how she met her ex-husband to these lines
' I remember my younger self, crossing this road. Still wearing clothes bought in England and striding along in borrowed purple shoes on my way to meet Geoff.
I'm working on the start of a new one, and I am doing the same thing - I am letting the MC tell me his story ( doing it as a guy!) and I'll let him talk and talk for pages and pages and I won't worry, because that's his job. My job is to edit what he tells me untill it's a book. I feel more like a biographer, at the end of the day.
Although I have been writing on and off for 30 years (My first series of books being a hand illustrated collection on graph paper, stapeled together - what one might call self publishing) - it is only now that I have learnt how it is that I write.
I have found the cloud invaluable, and also the crits which I have managed to scrape the pennies together for, and my main issue has been to remove the back story from my current story. This is the issue people flag up again and again, and they are right - or rather, they are right but I am wrong, in that I had always thought that I was showing people a finished piece - but I wasn't.
What I do I realize, and what works for me, is to write everything at first. To write every drop of back story into the narrative as it's told - but what I have learnt is not to think that is the story. It isn't, it's the roots of the story, and like roots, there are hundered of strands all slowly coming together. What I then do, is go back and decide if each piece of back story is needed to make the moment work, or has it served it's purpose already. By this I mean, I know the back story, I have worked it out, it has coloured the plot by is it's existence, so do we need it, or just the effect it's caused. Like a stone dropped in a pool, you need the ripples, not the stone.
Each edit is a quest to whittel away the back story, while understanding what it does to the front story ( if that's even a phrase) - so that what remains is crucial to the plot, entertaning and informative, but not cleggy. I think I have, in my most finished one, reduced four pages of the story of my MC and how she met her ex-husband to these lines
' I remember my younger self, crossing this road. Still wearing clothes bought in England and striding along in borrowed purple shoes on my way to meet Geoff.
‘Wow,’ my friend Haike said in her rich, German accent after she met him ‘you really traded up!’ I could never afford shoes good enough to meet Geoff in, until after I had.'
Which I think tell you pretty much all you need to know as far as the book goes. The more intricate version is very interesting, very well written, and enjoyable to read, but not the point - the point is I needed to write it to know what happened, so that I would know how it changed her future.I'm working on the start of a new one, and I am doing the same thing - I am letting the MC tell me his story ( doing it as a guy!) and I'll let him talk and talk for pages and pages and I won't worry, because that's his job. My job is to edit what he tells me untill it's a book. I feel more like a biographer, at the end of the day.
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11 Comments
The original was just a means of blanking out a grief I found hard to bear at the time - I had no aspiration to write fiction for publication, it was something to fill my mind at the end of a working day but it took over and inspired me to write on with a purpose. I started again at a point just before the white female reached puberty and opened with her crisis.
Now I know it's much better for me to have the complete story fully imagined and written first, then I cut, cut, cut every unnecessary word, drip-feeding instead of info-dumping. As you say ... it works well for me and I find I now recognise when aspiring writers are working out the story in their own heads rather than showing the finished product to a reader.
I agree about the moving around of conversations, Tfx. It's a bit like re-orchestrating a piece of music – change the harmonies and the whole sound-world changes.
But Tenacity, I think your way is a lot better. One of many variants on the way us munchkins work. I suggest that you don't over analyse. If you feel comfortable doing it that way, just do it that way.
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