What is your writing technique ?

[Lacedaemonian]

A well crafted post though, pal. Thought provoking stuff. I suspect I may be neurodiverse, probably ADHD. It takes me a long time to write something substantial. My working memory and concentration are duff. I may have to consider abandoning a larger novel and stick to writing short stories or poetry. A few authors have been quite successful at writing short stories using the same characters and universe. Thinking of the Witcher off the top of my head.

 

[THX1138]

Writing a novel has been a challenge for me too, but they are not a continuous flow. They tend to be two-three-chapter adventure/events that have some form of tie into the next part of the story. May not be that way for all novels, but that's how I am taking my approach to it.

 

[Mgellis]

I try to rely on these rules (doesn't always work)...

 

[ANV]

I am used to be a Game Master, so I am very often, too often starting with the antagonisti part - what does the villain want and what are they doing to achieve it.
How it could be stopped / intercepted / complicated
Who would be able to do it and why would that person want to do it in the first place
Then I write and write and after the first draft I have a better idea about the story and characters and I can write it all over again but with a better understanding of what I am actually doing that time

 

[Astro Pen]

In my first writing class we had an assignment to say how we overcome writers block. But it is basically how I write anyway, no plan, just discovery writing.
I'll post it here because story always emerges even here in what was 'supposed' to be a technique essay.

500 word Assignment: “How I deal with writers block”

I look at clouds and sometimes see a fluffy puppy or the profile of an old man, kinda. I am enviously aware that there are others who can look at those same clouds and see a white rose or Marylin Monroe.
Today I look at a rectangle of white paper without a trace of imagery, a uniform flat sky waiting for me to sculpt something from that blank mist and give it meaning, but there is no breeze, to swirl and form shadow and light

This is live action, typed as it happens Welcome inside the head of this writer as he tackles this weeks assignment.

Everyone has their own methods for escaping the inspirational doldrums. One of mine is “the room”.
The room starts as a space with metaphorical dice by it.

The room can be anywhere from Peru to The international space station.

Let’s roll the dice…

We are in an apartment in Tokyo

Hmm Who else is in the room?

Mother, brother, wife or lover?

It’s Sumiko, a semi feral elf of a girl who has done a couple of jobs for me in the past . She kneels on, rather than sits in the chair like a cat waiting to pounce. Smiling or frowning through our conversation, the expressions that are ‘expected’ rather than actually felt, this is the mask of the street survivor.

Who, or what is outside?

Roll again

Hiroshi, he is in his apartment two blocks away. He has turned states evidence in a Cocaine smuggling trial. Soon he will implicate me, not by intent but the police will inevitably join the dots that lead to my door.

Not good.

Why is Sumiko here?

She has a talent, she is a one trick pony but it is one hell of a trick.
She can walk through any house and commit the layout to memory.
She has been in Hiroshi's home.
Later, she can run through that house in complete darkness, because, she runs through the model in her head, not what her eyes see.

This, makes her the perfect Ninja assassin...

 

[Oligonicella]

To lead off, my career was in IT, system developments specifically. I'm also very visually oriented when I think. So I thought I'd share how I plan out my books with graphic symbols.

This part is for a book:​

For the story flow of a book, I use a variation of DFD (data flow diagrams). However the pictures attach here, it's the one with the little circles.

Each circle is a chapter (I tend to focus on action and short chapters) and the lines are characters, each by color. The scale running diagonally is the time line which varies for each story. It's just to remind me of pacing and location clashes. I put notes where appropriate but most disappear as I address them in the writing. If a chapter is particularly complex, I'll do another page for it with the circles being 'snap shot' events.

The diagram on the first DFD pic pretty much only needed to deal with the characters. The second DFD pic is characters (top path) and their goals towards the creation of their organization (bottom, faded). This keeps the scenes I write for a chapter (I don't do linear) in the proper time with who is and isn't available.

This part is for the history arc:

The organization itself has a much longer life span and as you might expect an antagonist, their contentions broken into books. I stuck with graphics but changed modes. The picture with the vertical bars is that.

The first history image is where the books fall on the time line and the purple text is the therapy sessions my guy was forced into which pretty much align with each story. The therapy explains the odd numbering of the titles.

I have a number of variations of what is connected to the time line like the second history image which shows where characters enter and leave the overall story line in some way, typically by dying.


I'm down to the last two and I am swamped by notes I've accumulated over the years and it's starting to feel more like wading mud. Well, thicker mud. The current book is grim and that drags now instead of being interesting but the last one is a comedy so that should help.

All of this; the graphics, text, notes, biographies and concept ideas are all on computer as that's been my life. I many times carry a leather office note folder with me but I still use notes plus DFDs to work on snags.​

 

[Phyrebrat]

@Oligonicella this is terrifying to a muggle like me but v impressive. Welcome to Chrons

 

[paeng]

In relation to this, check out the book Write Like the Masters.

 

[Oligonicella]

@Oligonicella this is terrifying to a muggle like me but v impressive. Welcome to Chrons

No need for intimidation. It's just symbols and for the book chapters, easily understood and done. There are a number of freeware graphics packages. Or, like I do sometimes, just draw the flows on paper.

I find reducing the chapters to bubbles allows me to visually walk through the story and if I find the flow (from upper left -> lower right) doesn't feel right or doesn't fit time line, I can just move the bubble and lines attached. In my current story I have a convergence of seven characters and found I hadn't written anything to get one of them there. New bubble located left of convergence and connecting where he was to it and then to the convergence.

Here's a fun story DFD. I had to figure a way to indicate back travel in time. The story line itself is simple but as you can see the travel becomes most intense towards (both at and to) the middle of the story.

That second set of the previous diagrams I can agree with as it's to coordinate the non-sequential manner of the series.