Advice for getting started

[Hex]

See, just to be awkward, I'd never write anything if I did this.

I like to write the story (and research anything I absolutely have to know as I'm doing it -- but only what I really need to keep going*) and then go back and fill things in -- like colour and description and historical detail. If I get the story down, and the character interactions, I can layer up by going back and focusing on all the scenes I wrote as Get Character A to Point B and seeing how I can make them better and more interesting.

If I get stuck in research, then I never get anywhere.

What I'm trying to say is basically a repeat of what everyone else said -- it depends on you. Some people find that taking away the pressure to make it good really works (I like that), some people need to think everything out in advance and some people think while writing. Maybe try the approaches out and see which one works?


* want to know about valerian root or the wildflower Hound's Tongue? Ask me anything!

 

[Venusian Broon]

Maybe try the approaches out and see which one works?


* want to know about valerian root or the wildflower Hound's Tongue? Ask me anything!

You're absolutely right Hex and it's down to each individual to find the routine that suits them best.

In my head my approach really isn't that different from yours - it's just a bit of rearranging - I think we both ask the same quantity of questions but at the start I'm asking more and writing less , (hopefully meaning that near the end I'm asking less and writing more!)

My impression is that AD doesn't quite have your confidence Hex to just write immediately, a position I've definitely been in before hence my 'one-sided' advice!

 

[Hex]

I really like the sound of the way you work, VB, but my great realisation was that I could start writing without knowing everything I wanted to know.

I used to write first chapters or, more commonly, scribble down ideas and then not do anything with them. When I started DC, I did it to see if I could write something novel length, and not worry too much about what I was writing.

So not worrying too much let me get started and write a full 100,000 words manuscript (eventually). I'm not sure it's the best way to do things -- it took an awful lot of rewriting and it could use some more -- but it broke my inability to write more than a couple of pages.

Your approach is more sensible -- I spend a fair amount of time rethinking scenes because I haven't put the thought in to begin with -- but if I don't just write I get frozen by all the stuff I have to do.

I guess we all get confidence from different places.

 

[Boneman]

I'm a confidence trickster: I get an idea and I flesh it out for days/weeks/months/ and then I start writing. I don't even think about whom I will send it to/ask to look at it - I write for myself, and I'm confident I'll like it. Of course when I do look at it, I see its faults, and hack away at them, and then I like it some more. I keep doing that until I do have the confidence to show it to others.

Write for yourself - if you don't have the confidence to start under that basis, then maybe begin with non-fiction - facts and figures and historical events that happened, so you don't have to put yourself into the writing...

 

[The Judge]

When I wrote my SFs, I wrote first and researched odd bits as I was going, on the basis that I wasn't trying to be hard SF which needs a proper scientific grounding. What I didn't know I invented and as long as my hand-waving is pretty enough no one wanting soft SF is going to quibble. (Anyone wanting hard SF isn't going to be reading it in the first place.) But that's because in truth I'm writing about now, my characters are from now, and I know about now because I'm living it. I might not know how a space ship works, but my characters don't know either, in the same way that I don't know how the internal combustion engine works and I really don't care as long as it does what it needs to do. (And I make sure I don't write a character who is an engineer who will have to know...)

When I started my fantasy I did it completely the other way round, since I'm grounding it in historical reality and I needed it to feel real so that when I morphed into the fantasy that also felt genuine and part of the world. As a result I spent weeks reading around generally to get an impression of Renaissance Italy and in that time I barely wrote a word. Even when I started writing in earnest I would still spend hours researching things -- the first scene has a woman at a door and I couldn't progress until I knew what kind of door latch/knob might be used. Just writing "She put her hand on the latch" and making a mental note to check at the end was impossible -- I had to know then and until I did know nothing else was getting written.

So, AD, it's not only a question of your temperament, it's a matter of what you're writing also. If there is an historical aspect to it, my advice would be to immerse yourself in the history first, and there comes a tipping point when you can feel yourself there and the words will flow, and flow faster and faster as you know the world better.