three is a magic number
Aug. 1st, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraSo there are at least three facets of drafting new stories, as far as I can tell.
One is pure thought. The original "what-if?". The times when you stop writing to think, "Okay, so I have this, but where does the story go on from here?" and think about the component ideas of the story, the themes, the plot, etc. without actually writing anything.
The second is thought-in-writing. This is the one where you just keep writing along, but the things that come out of your pen, or onto the keyboard, are not things that you knew before your fingers touched the keys.
(This second one can also be split into two: thought-in-writing that sets up the framework for what the story is, and thought-in-writing that veers off from the third, writing.)
The third is writing. There's probably a more apt term for this one. Sitting down with the knowledge of what-happens-next and, well, writing it.
Personally, I've found that I have to have at least a little thought-in-writing to keep my brain engaged. If I know too much about exactly what's going to happen next, either my brain just shuts down from that story ("what's the point in writing it if I already know what happens?") or, if I have a particular momentum, invents new tangents for the narrative to take.
The three also require different levels of mental energy. I suspect that this varies for everyone. For me, the second sub-category of thought-in-writing is the easiest; it takes determined mental energy for me to do "writing" to a formula I know beforehand, whereas inventing as I go along is easy, as long as I know the framework of the story.
This is why I think I need to figure out how to stagger stories. If I always had something to work on where all I need to do is invent within a framework, something easy like falling down a hill, then I could feel satisfied with that and still have energy left to framework something else. Otherwise, I get stuck in periods like right now, when I don’t have a novel to work on any more, and all the stories I've started are demanding full mental energy to deal with frameworking them up from the ground.
Rewriting is a whole other story.
(Pun unintended.)
(Mostly.)
One is pure thought. The original "what-if?". The times when you stop writing to think, "Okay, so I have this, but where does the story go on from here?" and think about the component ideas of the story, the themes, the plot, etc. without actually writing anything.
The second is thought-in-writing. This is the one where you just keep writing along, but the things that come out of your pen, or onto the keyboard, are not things that you knew before your fingers touched the keys.
(This second one can also be split into two: thought-in-writing that sets up the framework for what the story is, and thought-in-writing that veers off from the third, writing.)
The third is writing. There's probably a more apt term for this one. Sitting down with the knowledge of what-happens-next and, well, writing it.
Personally, I've found that I have to have at least a little thought-in-writing to keep my brain engaged. If I know too much about exactly what's going to happen next, either my brain just shuts down from that story ("what's the point in writing it if I already know what happens?") or, if I have a particular momentum, invents new tangents for the narrative to take.
The three also require different levels of mental energy. I suspect that this varies for everyone. For me, the second sub-category of thought-in-writing is the easiest; it takes determined mental energy for me to do "writing" to a formula I know beforehand, whereas inventing as I go along is easy, as long as I know the framework of the story.
This is why I think I need to figure out how to stagger stories. If I always had something to work on where all I need to do is invent within a framework, something easy like falling down a hill, then I could feel satisfied with that and still have energy left to framework something else. Otherwise, I get stuck in periods like right now, when I don’t have a novel to work on any more, and all the stories I've started are demanding full mental energy to deal with frameworking them up from the ground.
Rewriting is a whole other story.
(Pun unintended.)
(Mostly.)
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Date: 2009-08-01 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-03 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-03 06:43 pm (UTC)