saturnR wrote:

Hi guys, we've been busy, reading, writing & recommending fanfics. Let's talk about the actual process of writing itself. Fellow writers out there (fanfic or otherwise); what's your process? where do you find inspiration (it's not allowed to come from staring at photos of Benedict with a bathrobe on)? how do you know when to end (that it's as good as it can be & is ready to be seen by the rest of the planet)?

Lovely topic.

For me, personally, the start comes from one of two things: want or need. I either want to write something or I get told to write something. Commission or personal. It usually starts with something rather general like a theme or a topic that I would like to discuss. A story unfolds after many hours of redrafting and swearing. I like to handwrite ideas if I have the time but I sadly rarely do. I have another writer whom I frequently talk to about our work which really puts perspective on what I am doing. 

In terms of ending it really depends on the story or the format. A short story written for personal reasons will be a different length to a script (and then we get into subcategories of scripts and then even deeper into in house formatting styles and other written and unwritten rules.) 

When writing for yourself then finding an ending point is easy : it ends when it ends. There is nothing to stop you from imposing a word count on yourself but I just don't have the self restraint when it comes to that kind of work. I spend most of my days looking at word/page/minute counts. I try not to do the same thing in my 'spare' time.

Just one more thing: how did you know about that photograph of Benedict in a bath robe? No one knows I have that!

For the actual process of writing, the best advice I heard was from a professional SF author at a Star Trek convention.  He said too many novice writers get hung up on trying to make everything perfect sentence by sentence in the first draft.  As a result they get mired down and never complete the story.  He said, just pick up a pen or a keyboard and blow through the first draft, getting as much down as you can.  Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, sentance structure, just get the story down.  Then put it away in a drawer (or file it) for a few weeks before you pull it out and read through it again.  You will have much more clarity about whether or not you are saying what you want to say. At that point you can start rewriting and refining. It could take any number of drafts.  Don't rush, don't be impatient.  Sometimes ideas have to simmer before they gel.

My own personal bit of advice - get a trusted Beta Reader.  This person can't just be a friend who will tell you what you want to hear in order to avoid hurting your feelings. You must then LISTEN to your Beta Reader.  It may be hard, you may not agree, but if you really take the time to listen to what the other person is saying without taking it personally, it will challenge you and stretch you to do better. It really works - but you must put ego aside somewhat.

I'm not a prolific fan fic writer - maybe about only 4 to my credit.  The inspiration or an idea may come from a side story I think needs to be told or it could just arrive out of nowhere; but in general I write in someone else's universe where the ground work is already laid for me.  I'm not very original it seems. 

SusiGo wrote:

What is important for me as well is to have people whom I can just ask questions regarding certain details without necessarily having them read the whole text. This can be my family, friends or colleagues. And I often need experts on various subjects. Last year it was a toxicologist as I was writing about a rare poison. 
 

I can vouch for this... many writers underestimate the power of good research. Kudos to you xx.
 

So, do we use this thread to everything that has to do with us, writing? (Because I shamelessly intend to do so...)

I've basically finished my first story. I've done some plotting (do you call it that in English?), I know roughly what will happen where and why, but I can't bring myself to write down the first words. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's terrible. I kind of enjoy this stage of planning. Everything is still open, everything is possible.

Right now I'm falling in love with the Isle of Arran where it will take place and I'm watching one u-tube video about it after another instead of just going ahead.

Does anyone know the feeling?

Pretty much.   Yeah.   Back when I did keep up writing (sigh... unfortunate lost habit), annoyingly just like Susi said.  It's so commonly, typically, ridiculously cliche that one of the harder parts is just getting started and needing to make yourself.  Unless you have a super spark of something.  Or one of those enviously well-practiced people at it.  But even they get stuck.   
I think most the time, I was just uncertainly reluctant with too-constantly wanting to get it down "right" (and therefore procrastinating until it somehow 'came' to me).  Which is silly and an avoidant excuse with being brushed up enough on the subject matter/people involved, or knowing where you want to go with it (plotting, as you said), or even being unafraid to quit stalling and just get absolutely messy scrawling out everything that comes to you for a scene.  If you're a good writer, that's what editing afterwards is for.  ;)

Maybe you could try a short piece. The only fanfic I wrote so far is quite short and therefore was easier to plot. And I decided to do something that was not covered by the series but set before. Maybe you could write something about how Moriarty took notice of Sherlock at the very beginning. 

My pleasure. 

WRITERS BLOCK

Writer's block can happen for various reasons, and each author has his or her own style or method of writing so the causes of writer's block may be different for each author. There are some common causes, however, and ways to combat the problem. I will use my own experiences as a writer to illustrate points so please be aware that this article will focus primarily on writing fiction although these techniques can and will work for other forms of writing such as papers, technical writing, journals, et cetera. 

SOME CAUSES OF WRITER's BLOCK

Probably one of the most common reasons for writer's block for new authors is that they have started a project or story without doing any preliminary work. A new author may ask themselves, “Why can’t I just sit down and write something. Whatever comes to mind and put that down on the paper?” The answer is simple. You can. 

As a matter of fact that is how many first time writers compose their first stories. That is how I got started. I had no real beginning, middle or end in mind. My first work was a fan fiction based on the Harry Potter books. I may not have had any idea what I was doing, and didn’t know any writing techniques, but what I did have was a passionate love of the characters and the world in which they lived. That took me through nearly 50 chapters, until I hit the inevitable - writer’s block. The story that I first started sits, to this day, unfinished. 

If I had known to do some simple preliminary work on the story I was writing, I most likely would have finished it. Some of these preliminary techniques include, but are not limited to brainstorming, research, and writing an outline that will keep the story on track. 

Another common cause for writer’s block is what I call being  ‘lost in the woods’ It occurs when an author is writing a particularly long story and gets a little lost when the story seems to take on a life of its own and go in a direction that is different than originally planned. A story taking on a life of its own is not a bad thing, but it does require some measures to keep things on track. Loose rather than rigid outlines can help with this process. 

Writer’s block can be caused by setting unreasonable time limits on the completion of a story thereby putting undue stress on the author. The author can end up becoming afraid of failure to complete the story in the timeframe they have given themselves and rather than fail they just give up. 

Time limits are not the only thing that can cause fear of failure in the author. Many college students have reported that the hardest part about writing literary assignments is getting started. Staring at a blank page or screen waiting for inspiration to dawn can be daunting and can also lead to fear of failure. I have found that sketching and brainstorming are excellent methods to rectify this particular problem.

Boredom can be a real problem for some authors. Sometimes when I am writing a story and I know that there is a large block of less interesting work that needs to be written before I get to what I consider the meat of the story I have found myself avoiding working on the story. There is a technique that I employed to get around that kind of block and I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

In my own experience the reason that I have ultimately abandoned some stories is because I have ended up loosing interest in the characters. I no longer have that same passionate love for Harry Potter and thus never went back and finished that first story I wrote. The same thing happened with the characters of the TV show Numb3rs. I wrote several quite good Numb3rs fan fiction stories, but have over time lost all interest in those characters and because of that have two stories that sit unfinished. This is actually a form of writer’s block as well. The only way that an author might combat this particular problem would be to set the work aside for a time. When you go back to the story, re-read the entire thing from the beginning and see if inspiration strikes. If this fails to work and the interest in the characters just isn’t there then my best advice would be to move to a new area of interest and begin writing again. Allowing disinterest in a particular story or set of characters to bring all of your writing efforts grinding to a halt will do neither you nor your readers any good. 

BRAINSTORMING

Brainstorming is an integral part of writing any fiction story. I know this now, but I have had my own experiences with failure to conceive a well thought out plot before beginning to write a story. I started a story called Anxiety based solely on a rough idea and one clearly detailed scene in my mind but didn't think the story through before I began writing it and posting it. I had no clear resolution to this story. The first chapter essentially wrote itself but after that I got into a bit of a quagmire because I had no completed plot, I had no clear villain, I didn't even have a solid concept of how or why the crimes were being committed. I almost dropped the story altogether until one day a fellow writer e-mailed me and started asking questions about what I had intended. This set of questions and my answers to them fueled more questions and more answers and before I knew it I was interested in the story again and this impromptu brainstorming session saved the story from extinction. Anxiety went on to win a Numb3rs Fan Fiction award in the category of Dark/Angst - so never let a mistake in the beginning stop you from finishing what you started.

There is a group of fellow writers with whom I have become friends. We wrote a story that was a collaboration of all of our writing styles. At first glance this might seem like it would be an impossible task, but it actually wasn't. We came up with a very basic outline; more of a general idea of what the story would be about then we opened a Google document called The Pit. 

This was a place to simply jot down different ideas that could potentially go into the story. The Pit had some great ideas in it, it had some silly ideas in it, it had some unworkable ideas in it. The point is, every author involved with the project could go into The Pit and read all of the ideas that had been written there. When it was their turn to write a chapter they had a place to draw ideas from if they got what I call plot-stuck. This is what brainstorming is all about.

I went to breakfast with a friend of mine whom I only get to see at Christmas time because we live on opposite ends of the country. I told her the basic idea for a manuscript that I am working on. She started to ask me questions and actually made a few suggestions. I liked some of her ideas and didn't think that some would work with the story as a whole, but the outcome was that I ended up with a whole new twist to the story as a result of our conversation. This is yet another example of brainstorming. Even if the person you are discussing your story with is unfamiliar with the characters they can still fuel ideas by asking you to explain your basic plot. By explaining what should be happening in your story you will find yourself coming up with new ideas. 

Another excellent example of this particular concept occurred while I was writing a Merlin story. One of my betas was not at all familiar with the BBC One program or how the characters were portrayed, but she had a very interesting idea about changing the opening sequence to the story. It stemmed back to her philosophy of “show don’t tell” and while her rendition of the changes to the opening sequence would not work for the story because of the nature of the characters, her basic concept led me to completely re-write the opening sequence. The new opening sequence worked so well that the first chapter of that story was extremely well received by my readers.

A great tool that I have found to be necessary when brainstorming on my own is a tape recorder. I generally like to have a tape recorder handy for those times when I don't have access to pen and paper. I do most of my thinking and planning while I am driving. I have come to carry a micro tape recorder in the car with me. Then when I get home I play the recording back and jot down all of the things I thought about into a brainstorming document similar to The Pit I described above.

RESEARCH

Research is a fundamental and important part of writing anything. In the case of a fictional story, no author can have knowledge of every aspect of their story. For instance, most fictional stories have one or more characters in situations where they get injured, so unless you also hold a medical degree you will most likely need to research injuries and illnesses as well as their treatments. Perhaps your characters find themselves immersed in a sticky legal issue; unless you also happen to be a lawyer you will find that you will need to research legal avenues available to the characters or at the very least learn appropriate legal terminology.

Without appropriate research your story will come off as hollow or unbelievable. There is nothing that can tear a reader out of a story faster than a glaring error due to lack of research about the subject matter. This can easily be seen as a mark of laziness on the part of the author. I saw a few examples of this type of issue in JK Rowlings final book in her Harry Potter series. An example would be the fact that it would have taken an extra hour or so to research the actual somatic effects one would suffer from jumping into a freezing pool of water in the dead of winter in the highlands of Scotland while fully dressed, only to get out of said freezing water, take the time to destroy a magical artifact and then hold a twenty minute conversation with another character before finding warmth and shelter.

When I wrote my first fan fiction, a Harry Potter, that required tons of research because the tale takes place in a part of the world where I have never been, and knew very little about. I researched maps of Great Britain, and looked at topographical images of Northern Scotland in order to describe the journey Harry took to get to Azkaban. I researched the rough seas off the coast of Northern Scotland. I researched the types of birds that nested along the cliffs that border the north sea; all to get two or three realistic lines of dialogue. I even joined a travel forum to learn more about the areas I was writing about.

I researched dialects and common slang terminology. I looked at hundreds of maps of London and the surrounding areas. I actually found the place that the Weasley family lived on a map. Ottery Street Catchploe is a real place! As a matter of fact, many of the places in the series are real places. I ended up printing reams of pages with Latin and Greek roots and suffixes to invent spells. I researched the lore on dragons, centaurs, and other magical or mythical creatures. 

Sometimes when writer's block happens it can be caused by hitting a road block of sorts. You are happily writing along and the story takes you to a point where you don't honestly know what would believably happen next or what a character would be doing, facing or saying. This is where research can be an enormous help. My best piece of advice here is this:

Google is your friend!

There is an unbelievable wealth of information out there on any topic imaginable. Let the searcher beware, however; not all of the information out there is true or even remotely accurate. Check your sources or do what I do; get your information from multiple sources. Wikipedia, for instance, is a great resource but it also is not guaranteed accurate because anyone can add an entry. I have seen some dreadful examples of information on Wikipedia. I saw a link to an article on Mary Sues. I went to check this source out and was disappointed because it seemed that the information in the article was based on personal opinion rather than any actual facts. 

Doing research will also often times open up new avenues for your story, thereby obliterating writer's block. This happened to me on my last story called Memento Vivere. As I was researching aneurysms I found a radical technique that is gaining acceptance throughout the medical vascular community and I ended up incorporating it into the story. It worked extremely well as a tool to advance the characterization of one of the main characters who was then forced to make a decision for his brother about this alternative technique.

OUTLINES

Outlines are great tools to build a solid foundation for a story. For me most of my stories have a point-by-point or idea-by-idea outline. Let me see if I can make that a little clearer. I am working on a story right now that is somewhat clear in my head. The first chapter is now written and at the end of the document is a rough synopsis of the rest of the story. What I will do is show you an outline for an old story to give you an idea of how I do it. This may or may not work for you. It is a good place to start however.

Example #1:
http://atylock.googlepages.com/outline1

The above example is simply my own variety of outline. I have a tendency to do more detailed outlines that resemble a severely abbreviated version of the story. Some folks may prefer a point-by-point outline like this.

Example #2:
http://atylock.googlepages.com/outline2

The examples above are from stories that I have written and the style may not work well for you. You can fashion your outline like a graph or a tree. Try to diagram the major points in your story and once you have completed a rough diagram that takes you all the way through the most major and basic parts of the story you can begin to fill in the blank spaces as you brainstorm ideas. Whichever technique works best for you to help you visualize your story as a whole is something to try. If you are not used to working with outlines try different ones. Outlines are a great way to etch out the story. An author needs to know essentially where the story is going in order to get to the end in a satisfactory fashion. Seat-of-your-pants writing is usually a sure-fire way to either develop a case of writer's block or at the very least write your story into a corner; also something I have done.

DRAWING A BLANK

I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down to write a chapter and found that my hands were poised over the keyboard but I couldn't figure out how to start. When this happens I know in my head that if I could just get things started the words would come. Sometimes I'll be typing along and hit a sort of sandbar that stops me dead in my tracks. There are many things that I have found that help when this sort of temporary stall occurs.

Many times getting up and simply stretching or walking around works. I will often talk to myself to get things moving again. I will visualize my characters and carry on the dialogue for them. I sound like an absolute nutter when I do this, but it usually works. I was driving along one day dialoguing, and one of my co-workers pulled up next to me and noticed that I was chattering away while I sat alone in my car. Later that day he asked if I was on the phone. Without batting an eyelash, I explained that I was working out a particular plot problem in a story I was writing, and talking to myself in my character's voices is how I do that sort of thing.

His question gave me an idea, and I picked up an earpiece that looks like a blue tooth. This way when I am driving or walking along and I want to dialogue, everyone will simply think I'm on the phone. Ah yes, the joys of modern technology! Twenty years ago you would have been pegged as eccentric or even downright crazy if you went around talking to yourself out loud. These days it is automatically assumed that you have some sort of bluetooth technology shoved in your ear.

Another way to get past a small sticky spot or a minor blank is to do something physical. Get a tennis ball and bounce it off the wall while you try to figure out the next step in your story. Go back three pages and start reading out loud to yourself. When you get to the last sentence that you already have written just keep talking even if it sounds odd or off. Repeat the last sentence a couple of times to get yourself going if you have to.

One of the other things that I will often do is to simply skip that section all together. Put brackets around what you are having trouble verbalizing and move on. You can always come back and fill in the blanks at a later time; for example:

[Jonathan gives Maurice a lecture on how illogical he is behaving toward throwing out or donating his mother's old clothes] 

You don't know exactly what you want Jonathan to say but the next part of the chapter is clear in your mind so move on. You can always come back and write out how you plan to have Jonathan lecture his father. Many stories never get finished because of small sticking points like this. There is no hard and fast rule that says you must write a story in a linear fashion.

As a matter of fact, the first half of my very first fan fiction was written in a series of well detailed scenes. I had a lot of those bracketed things happening and what I eventually did was to go back and write the filler or connecting narrative that  ended up sewing all of these scenes together to complete the story. It was almost like dealing with a written patchwork quilt. This technique works especially well for people who 'see' their plots in individual scenes. A writer that images in this manner can go from scene to scene then write the connecting text later.

An exercise that can help you to visualize connecting text or narrative is to try to find it in an existing completed story. Find a well written story from this site or select any good book that you enjoy. Look at any given chapter from that story, and try to find and highlight the connecting text that weaves each consecutive scene together. Once you have done that look at just the highlighted areas to give you an idea of what good connecting text or narrative looks and sounds like.

Oh, another question:
Usually I just see characters in my head talking. I write down the dialogue and that's it. Then I try to do some framing - setting, background, whatever. But still, I tend to end up with loads of little pieces that not necessarily fit together.
Do you have any experience in putting things together like this? Or do you just start in the beginning and finish with the last page?
And do you know the feeling when you realise the dialogues you have don't "belong" in the story you're just trying to write?


Ps: Yes, I'm writing my first proper fanfic ever. I just get the feeling that this thread might become my best friend till the end of november...
 

Last edited by Whisky (October 5, 2015 1:59 am)

Hi Whisky,here are my answers to your questions. Bear in mind that I'm not an experienced writer at all, this November I'll join my second NaNoWriMo and hopefully finish the first draft for my first ever novel. I've also written three complete fanfic stories: Guardian, Elephant and Hand.  

Foreign languages: When I think in English, I think in English, no Dutch enters into it unless I'm really struggling to find a word, which is relatively rare. If I don't know a word, I usually just look it up on the internet. With translation it's useful not to just look at a dictionary translation but also to look how a word is used and by whom. 

Putting things together: I'm a real plotter and I can't write in any other way. I plot out every scene in advance. When I think of a situation, pieces of dialogue sometimes come up and I write it down in screenplay format, with no dialougue tags. Later I turn them into proper scenes. As a result, my stories tend to be a bit heavy on the dialogue, I'm trying to improve that. As for structure: I use a four part structure, also known as a three act with a midpoint. It's a very standard way of structuring a story.  

As for dialogues that don't 'belong' in a story, yes I know and there's only one thing you can do: cut them out. You can always save them for later or turn them into something else. It's easy to go wild with dialogues and then it looks like it can't be any other way, but ususally when you think about the scene, there's probably a way to rewrite the dialogue to better suit the mission of the scene and still have those clever lines and jokes you came up with earlier. Trimming dialogues usually makes them a lot better. 

Changing basics: I change basics all the time: Guardian was first person, Elephant and Hand were third person. With Hand I tried to focus more on action and less on dialogue than on the other two and the three stories are completely different in tone and setting. I like to explore new things and experiment a bit and I'm not really stuck on some storylines or fan theories. I also don't worry whether my stories are consistent with each other, I just try to work out an idea and hopefully entertain some people in the process.