Well, I’m so proud of myself. I’m coming to the end of writing another new series. It took a lot longer than I planned. A whole extra 30 days more!
Eeek!
But you know what? That’s not always a bad thing. Even though I had a detailed outline of each chapter, and had replayed the entire story over and over in my head maybe thousands of times – it still wasn’t quite ready.
WHY SLOWING DOWN HELPED MY STORY
The extra time I took on this one piece of work helped me make it more unique, more detailed and definitely richer. It also gave me more time to research.
I believe that your writing time is like a writer’s own special cooking time. Some writers rush through the first draft and leave huge plot chuncks out to fix later. But I like to make sure that my plot is thoroughly flushed out in the first draft. That way when I send it out to beta readers they can concentrate on grammar, sentence structure, character development and big gotcha’s.
Now I must be honest in saying my natural stewing time puts me either at 3 months up to 4 months (like this last WIP) of actual writing time. But at the end of it all, I’ve created a much better woven story.
DO YOU STEW WHILE WRITING? OR ANYTHING THAT's MADE THE END PRODUCT BETTER?
4 comments:
I should stew more. I think it would help me in the end.
Thanks and good luck.
I spend a lot of time thinking and planning between each draft before I start tinkering with anything. I'd rather make changes in my outlines rather then to a fully finished piece of work when at all possible.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not afraid to change it up if I need to. (Moon Dance is getting some big edits, for instance)... But I'm a think first and write later kinda person. I like to "see" a scene first. I like to really know my characters.
But then when they tell me "Oh, wait... I'm protecting her because she reminds me of the little sister I lost 3,000 years ago." I can somehow take a deep breath and *gasp* roll with it.
It's funny because I usually do give myself a lot of time to stop and think about the story and how to best write it, but for my current WIP, I used the fast drafting technique and it worked better for me. The story flowed and directed me. So I think it really depends on the manuscript at hand. Sometimes you need to stew and other times you need to keep up with the story's fast pace.
I think about a story sometimes for years before I write it, so that by the time I sit down to start, I have a lot already figured out. That said, a novel takes me about 7 to 9 months--and that's only the first draft! So to me your process seems super fast.
Post a Comment