Hi,
@msstice! Let's see if any of this helps:
I am a mix of an oil and watercolor painter. Oil in the sense that I know what is going to happen in the story (the outline), just as I know what the central characters are, the antagonists, the environment and all the rest of the elements.
Well, normally.
But I am also a watercolor painter in the sense that I leave complete freedom for the development of events, mainly arcs. More or less, I know what is going to happen; what I always ignore is the how.
BTW, I don't use creative compilation programs.
I am fully aware of the problem you mention. Your eyes are on the screen, you are writing a scene, what is happening with the characters, that is, you know what it is about; but at the same time you are thinking about how you write that scene, and that in terms of two aspects, the grammatical form and the effect. And the effect is many things, the best is when your muse gives you the complete sentence, tidy, even with a pun, a synaleph or an ingenious repetition, an alliteration, or the beginning of an ellipsis that you will close in two paragraphs further.
But what if not? I have friends who tell me that they even get stuck at the end of the paragraph, they hate leaving widows, they feel like they could add one more word. And they die if the last sentence of the paragraph at the end of one page is left hanging at the beginning of the other. Atrocious.
This whole process is already mostly rational or analytical enough to also hope that your muse will be inspired. And in the end you also end up involving her in the process. Instead of thinking or creating, it begins to peek over your shoulder and points to the screen: "Hey, there was a comma missing," she says.
That is, neither of you is creating. You become a simple typewriter and your muse in the spell checker.
Now, how do I make the partridge dizzy to the rational hemisphere, that analytical grouch, how do I deceive or rather distract him?
Because all these aspects I entrust it completely at chance.
So I always have a coin on hand. And a images folder.
My characters are photos. That allows me to generate a whole matrix of relations and functions. For example, just looking at the location of that photo that is my character allows me to see what it is surrounded by. Then I can compare that to the page where I have the outline, although most of the time I know what the scene or chapter is about.
But when I go back to looking at my folder of images, I will always find unforeseen situations; sometimes, depending on the color or number that I am using to establish character categories, those around the MC may not be friends, or they are not people who understand it, that is, they are a hindrance, waste of time; even an unexpected problem. Arcs appear, plot twists that I did not even suspect.
Random.
On the other hand, this also helps me in the descriptions. I don't need to imagine what the characters are like; I am seeing them. But I can't help wondering who they are, that is, what do they want, I can't resist the temptation to say something about their history, how they got involved in that mess.
And also on the other hand, speaking of superposition of characters and in addition to many characters, the way they are positioned in the folder helps me to know which of them will appear in a certain scene. It is a characteristic defect of my writing, of course, because I defend the principle that the MC should never do everything alone. But neither is the villain. So it happens a lot that the protagonism of the scenes is taken by secondary and even third-order characters. But I tend to respect each character; I don't shoot him without at least giving him a few lines to say.
Now, alternating attention between the page that I am writing and the images from where I am extracting most of the ideas generates a kind of ping-pong. It serves on the one hand to feed the muse (especially when something is not clear to me, a question, and the muse works better if she has a goal to solve) and on the other to train lateral thinking.
Then, while the process is still analytical in nature, at least for me it allows to generate lapses of rest in which the muse can really create. Or I go for a walk, do something else, the old tricks.
However, for me, going out for a walk allows me rather to reflect on the usefulness of the things that have appeared. This is already an absolutely analytical process, as my muse takes a nap at that moment. It is then that I evaluate the arcs and their relationship to the premises and the central idea of the story.
And yes, sometimes I stop walking: I understand that certain arc or a plot twist is definitely not useful or developing it will make it necessary to expand too many elements.
This has made me learn that I must be willing to eliminate things. Also, there is always the possibility that they can be used in other stories. For example, the plot of a short story that I hadn't published later helped me finish a novel that I was stuck on for weeks.
In this part of the process I also begin to, using a mathematical term, to
factor. That is to say, I evaluate which characters can take on the actions that others had done with the purpose of strengthening them and that the story concentrates on a smaller number of characters.
And what is the coin for, you ask?
To buy me a chocolate, obviously, dear. Not; I actually use it to decide for me sometimes. Because in my stories not even the MC is free from chance.
But curiously, he is usually lucky, look what things.
