I was chatting with Liana on the weekend about #SekritNovel, which for whatever reason is playing on my mind again (look, I’ve learned not to ask these questions. My brain dwells on the books it’s interested in at the time, and I just have to run with that), and we got to a point in the conversation where I’d explained a bunch of the worldbuilding to her, and she was all, Yes, your story is X group of people learn Y life lesson.
All of a sudden, the whole series (four books) leapt into crystal clarity.
I don’t mean, like, that I have a scene-by-scene outline for the series. What I mean is that I now understand the PURPOSE of the series, what I’m trying to aim for, what I’m trying to say.
That, for me, is critical. I *can* write a story without what is essentially my Major Theme, but for me, it’s a heck of a lot *easier* if I do have it in mind. It’s impossible to hold every piece of a novel in your head all at once; it’s just too big. So knowing the major theme like this is like a shortcut for me, a way to hold in mind at once much of the shape and structure and motivation of the piece without having to hold on to all those little details that tend to slip through your metaphorical fingers.
Of course, not everyone writes like this. Liana is persistently bemused by my super-big-picture approach like this. It’s not that she doesn’t write with themes in mind – and all texts have themes, it’s inescapable – but rather than her approach to plotting is more logic oriented: who is the character, what do they want, and thus how logically will they behave?
This seems like a sensible way to approach things, and indeed, it’s how a lot of big name authors who share their writing processes seem to function.
But for whatever reason, it just doesn’t gel as well when I try to approach writing like that. My way is more intuitive, which is great because when I get it right, it’s a lot less work, both in terms of pre-planning, and in terms of numbers of drafts I need to do – but it’s also a pain in the butt, because until I figure out what that Major Theme *is*, I’m mired.
I’ve only just realised that this is a Thing in my writing process, the thing that makes the difference between the stories that click right away and those that are laborsome, so for me now the next step is to figure out how I can get at the theme quickly and more efficiently. Because sitting around waiting for it to appear – or not – is not exactly a reliable course to productivity.
Plotting the scenes like Normal Writers(tm) do seems so much more straightforward.
So the point, then, is twofold: one, don’t force yourself to fit into writing processes, patterns and routines that don’t work for you just because Common Wisdom(tm) says they ought to work; and two, remember that actually, there’s no such thing as a Normal Writer(tm). Partly because if we were normal we probably wouldn’t be writing 😛 but also because there are as many ways to write a book as there are books to be written. Some patterns, processes and routines might be more common than others… but it doesn’t make them the rule.
Wonder how many other things in life that applies to… 😉