The planning process

[demotu]

allopathic, who knows me in real life and doesn't actually read my writing because he doesn't watch Torchwood (but is a cool guy who likes to chat about writing processes and other such things) got me thinking. The particular question he posed to me was:

Do you put a lot of thought into your writing before you start typing?

I hemmed and hawed a little, and

Comments

[demotu]

I really enjoy writing meta - I read synecdochic's, for example. Unlike her, I couldn't give advice, but I definitely can talk about what I do.

As for positive and negative aspects of our processes, I have a hard time seeing how I could change what I've written about here. I definitely could improve my editing process, mostly with the addition of time, though. *goes off to edit WiaD final entry for the eighth time*

[somarem]

I've only written once and can't remember how I got through it.

thank you for sharing your journey of how some of the wonderful stories i've read from you came about.

[demotu]

Thanks for reading along! It's a very mysterious process, really.

[ningloreth]

Here from metafandom.

Writing about writing is so much fun & I really enjoyed this.

It's fascinating, because your processes are almost identical to mine, and you've made them sound so very organised and rational!

I had never thought in terms of 'plot' and 'action' before, but it makes perfect sense: you have a (sometimes patchy) idea of where you're going and you improvise the journey as you go. I find that dialogue, coming from the characters themselves, sometimes completely changes where I'm going.

I do know more about the world than I write into the story, but not, actually, a whole lot.

Yes! But the rest is in your head somewhere and, if you should ever need to know more, you can just look and see.

When Kethan first told Ianto he wasn't monogamous, I hadn't given it huge amounts of thought. As I wrote, however, I found themes around that topic emerging...This is exactly what happens to me: someone says something in passing and it becomes the point (or one of the points) of the story. I think it's all the 'from the gut' stuff you

[demotu]

I'm glad it sounds organized and rational - it certainly doesn't feel that way when I'm writing. This:

I find that dialogue, coming from the characters themselves, sometimes completely changes where I'm going.

is very true, especially in pieces that are essentially character sketches.

Thanks for reading!

[eowyn_315]

This was a very interesting read. I followed a link here from su_herald, because I'm always curious about the process of other writers, and I was surprised to find that your process is almost exactly like mine! I probably spend less time on description, because I am much more dialogue-oriented and don't go into a lot of detail about setting, but otherwise, the thought process is pretty similar. Do you mind if I link to this in my own LJ?

[demotu]

Link away!

I write a lot of things that are very, very dialogue centric - the first three things I've written (including my monster-of-an-epic) are quite heavy on the dialogue - it's only the shorter challenge pieces I've been doing for writerinadrawer that have got me breaking out of that and focusing on description a little more.

(su_herald? How did I end up there? I don't write any Buffy!)

[eowyn_315]

There's been an increase in crossover between Buffy and Torchwood fandoms thanks to James Marsters' guest appearances... maybe somebody found you that way?

I tend to do the same thing - my one-shots are more descriptive than my chapter fics. When something is very plotty, I often have to remind myself to stop and describe the setting, otherwise I'll just keep plowing through with dialogue and action and forget that no one else can see what it looks like in my head. :)

I almost always write the dialogue of a scene first, and then flesh out the narrative around it. (Sometimes I think I should just write in script format, so I wouldn't have to do all the extra work!) I think writing it that way makes the dialogue feel like the most important element of the scene, and the description around it is secondary. Maybe that's a result of writing fic for a TV show? We all know what the characters look like, what the frequently used sets look like, and we know the basic rules of the universe, so there's not as much need to describe them.