AUTHORS: How do you structure your writing process?

[Tino]

Hi there,


I've been wondering how our beloved Star Trek authors structure their writing process?


Is there anyone who writes from the start to the end - straight through with some revisions afterwards?

Is there anyone who writes the dialog first and then fills in all the blanks (like action sequences or surroundings?

Is there anyone that writes chapter for chapter, maybe one chapter/day?


Background to my question: I noticed that sometimes a whole page is filled with impressions/thoughts/descriptions before any action/conversation takes place. I image that's hard to write and I wondered if any author kinda pushes these things back, focussing on the dialogue first. Or maybe writing down a sentence like "fill in action sequence here".

 

[Dayton Ward]

Is there anyone who writes from the start to the end - straight through with some revisions afterwards?

Generally speaking, this is my usual approach. That doesn't mean I don't interrupt the flow and go back to add something if it comes to mind while I'm writing.

Is there anyone that writes chapter for chapter, maybe one chapter/day?

Again speaking in general terms, I usually try to write a scene/chapter in a single "writing session." Doesn't always work out that way, but that's my intention. Depending on how fast I'm working or how easily the words come, a "session" can be an hour or two. Other times, it's the better part of the day, with me pausing here and there to beat my skull against my desk or a nearby wall.

 

[BolianAuthor]

I structure my stories like a TV episode or act of a feature film, so I structure my posts to reflect that pacing. In terms of the general story, ALL my stories are already fully thought-out and developed, before I even write anything, but when I write the individual posts, I try to pace them so that they end at a point where it "feels right" for it to end, or in other words... when you read one of my posts, you can imagine it ending at a point where a commercial break or scene conclusion would be, in a TV show or feature film, because the pacing feels right for that.

I generally don't spend more time than I need to on description, as I prefer to focus on the dialogue. Description is what it is... it serves to establish a setting, and to a certain degree, a mood, but the real focus of any work is the characters, and their words. That is what I concentrate on. The only time I really go to town with description, is when I'm writing a huge battle scene, because I need to convey the look and feel of the battle. In my case, I have to pay attention to the look of the battles, because the Star Trek universe's space battles look one way, and the BSG universe's space battles look another, so I need to convey that look specific to the universe I'm writing for.

I don't write anything if I have a writer's block, because in that case, whatever I write will be forced, and won't be anywhere near as good as what I could otherwise write. I want to give my readership the best that I can offer, so I would never give them something written during a block.

 

[Christopher]

"Structure." What is this?

My process isn't very structured, at least in terms of disciplining myself to get it done. As for the actual progress through the text, I usually go in a strictly linear fashion, though sometimes that slows me down when I get stumped, so I've been trying to train myself to jump forward to the next thing if I'm stuck on something.

Recently, I decided to try something new. I'd work on my novel in progress for a week to ten days, however long my momentum kept up, and then I'd switch to another project -- a short story, a rewrite, a portion of another novel, something -- for a few days, then go back to the main novel. I've often found that switching gears to another project helped recharge me creatively, and this was an attempt to take advantage of that but with a faster pace than before. It worked pretty well for about a month, but then I let myself fall out of the pattern and I haven't been able to recover that pace. Hopefully I'll be able to do better in the future.

 

[Greg Cox]

I definitely move through the book in a linear fashion--unless I have parallel plotlines involving different sets of characters in different locations. In that case, I'll often stick with the "A" plot for awhile, then go back and work on the "B" plot later, just so I don't have to keep switching gears or going back to see where exactly I left the away team last week. Once I get some momentum going, I don't want lose that impetus by switching to a whole 'nother plotline just when things are heating up somewhere else.

I'm also a big believer in concentrating on one kind of writing at a time, then layering it all together later. Some days I feel like writing dialogue, some days I'll concentrate on action or physical description. Heck, sometimes if I get stuck on a word, I'll just move on and come back later . . . just to keep the ball rolling. As a result, my first drafts tend to read something like this.

"Surrender your ship," the Klingon commander *VERBED. He unveiled his ultimate weapon. (WHICH IS? DESCRIBE.). "There is no dishonor in losing to a superior enemy. *INSERT APPROPRIATE KLINGON PROVERB HERE."

"Oh, yeah?" Kirk replied. *PHYSICAL ACTION. "Well, you can take your [WEAPON?] and *DO SOMETHING with it!"


Really. That's what it looks like.

 

[David Mack]

My process is basically the same as what Dayton described above.

 

[BolianAuthor]

Wow... I'm surprised that so many people tend to just write all the way through, and THEN do revisions, lol... I tend to fully develop my ideas, and then write the final product of all the development. The idea is that I go into a story from the point-of-view of an editor to begin with... I take my concept, develop and refine it until I think it's as good as it'll get, and then I write that... then, when I look back at it, I can see how much of what's left is absolutely essential to the story, even with all my initial refinement, and what stuff is kinda just taking up space, and can be dropped. I'd think that's a big time-saver. It is for me.

 

[JarodRussell]

I think when you need to meet deadlines, you cannot help but write all the way through. They need to have the basic outline anyway before they start.

 

[Christopher]

Wow... I'm surprised that so many people tend to just write all the way through, and THEN do revisions, lol... I tend to fully develop my ideas, and then write the final product of all the development. The idea is that I go into a story from the point-of-view of an editor to begin with... I take my concept, develop and refine it until I think it's as good as it'll get, and then I write that... then, when I look back at it, I can see how much of what's left is absolutely essential to the story, even with all my initial refinement, and what stuff is kinda just taking up space, and can be dropped. I'd think that's a big time-saver. It is for me.

Well, of course we do outlines before we write the actual manuscripts; in tie-in literature, it's obligatory. But devoting too much effort to outlining can be an excuse to postpone the actual writing. And too comprehensive an outline can limit you; there are always moments of serendipity in the actual writing process, where you write a line of dialogue or an image that triggers a whole new idea for a character arc or a subplot or the way to resolve a problem.

 

[BolianAuthor]

^

That's very true... in fact, it was one of those serendipitous moments that ended up reshaping my whole approach to the last "season" of "Battlestar Urantia", so yeah, one should always be receptive to the occasional spontaneous inspiration.

 

[William Leisner]

Recently, I decided to try something new. I'd work on my novel in progress for a week to ten days, however long my momentum kept up, and then I'd switch to another project -- a short story, a rewrite, a portion of another novel, something -- for a few days, then go back to the main novel. I've often found that switching gears to another project helped recharge me creatively,

I definitely move through the book in a linear fashion--unless I have parallel plotlines involving different sets of characters in different locations. In that case, I'll often stick with the "A" plot for awhile, then go back and work on the "B" plot later, just so I don't have to keep switching gears or going back to see where exactly I left the away team last week. Once I get some momentum going, I don't want lose that impetus by switching to a whole 'nother plotline just when things are heating up somewhere else.

Interesting. I tend to go through my outline in a linear fashion, but kinda like Christopher, will switch from A-plot to B-plot if I get bogged down, to recharge. Or, if I'm really rolling with the B-plot, I'll just put in a note like "A-plot scene TK" as a placeholder to come back to later.

As for dialogue-heavy scenes, a lot of the time I tend to write those as straight dialogue, almost in script format, and then go back later to add in stuff like, Picard considered that, then shook his head and replied...

 

[Kirsten Beyer]

Like Dave and Dayton, I tend to write all the way through. My outlines are detailed enough that I break down my writing days by sections and depending on the length of the given section, get through one or two a day. Dialogue/description...doesn't matter. I have found though, usually once in each book, that there is a section of a story I didn't realize needed more than I had given it in the outline and I have to go back and make that happen. In Full Circle, for instance, one throwaway sentence in the outline became an entire chapter. Piss poor planning, but there it is.

 

[James Swallow]

Is there anyone who writes from the start to the end - straight through with some revisions afterwards?

Me; I get bore-sighted on stuff and tend to start at the start and move in linear fashion to the end, then go back and revise after I'm done; although each day I also look back at the previous day's work and do a little clean-up as I go.

 

[Lonemagpie]

It varies according to the project - a lot of my work has been research-heavy, which means that when a source has an expiry date (e.g. having made a special arrangement to borrow some books from the normally-non-lending reference library) then all the bits involving that have to get done first.

Sometimes I'll expand that to include particular locations, so that if several scenes require descriptions and opinions of or reactions to the same place, I'll do all those in one go, regardless of their place in the book. (sort of like shooting a movie out of sequence).

I'll also usually have a few points-of-interest in the outline, where I'll know what line of dialogue or turn of phrase for an action scene that I'll want to use there, and I'll usually put those in first. That way I have, so to speak, some checkpoints to reach when going through linearly.

But mostly it's pretty much the same as Greg Cox says higher up the thread. Especially where having days where the mind fixates on one type of thing - dialogue, fight scenes, whatever - is concerned.

 

[BolianAuthor]

Interesting to see all the various techniques used by different writers, in the practice of the craft.

 

[garamet]

Use the outline as a scaffold and follow it linearly, but hang lots of flashbacks on it as well. Drives some readers crazy, especially when I do flashbacks-within-flashbacks, like Celtic knots.

It's how I roll...

 

[Steve Roby]

Drives some readers crazy, especially when I do flashbacks-within-flashbacks, like Celtic knots.

I was watching a movie once -- I think it was Passage to Marseille, with Humphrey Bogart -- and realized the scene I was watching was a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. (You might not think a movie with Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre could be anything but great, but you'd be wrong. And the nested flashbacks aren't the only reason.)

 

[BolianAuthor]

flashbacks-within-flashbacks, like Celtic knots.

It's how I roll...

LOL... I've done that a couple times, and aye... it can drive one nuts, lol.

 

[Christopher]

I was watching a movie once -- I think it was Passage to Marseille, with Humphrey Bogart -- and realized the scene I was watching was a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. (You might not think a movie with Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre could be anything but great, but you'd be wrong. And the nested flashbacks aren't the only reason.)

Holy cow, and directed by Michael Curtiz too? It's like a Casablanca reunion! Not to mention Max Steiner as the composer and a few other veterans as well. There's even a character named Renault in it.

 

[Steve Roby]

Given how much I love Casablanca, my expectations for Passage were pretty high. And unmet. (Best bet for recapturing some of the Casablanca magic is To Have and Have Not.)