The Writing Process - How do I do it?

I think there's a common misconception, or at least a lie that everyone tells to themselves when they're reading a book. Perhaps, it's not even thought about, but here it is. People think a writer sits down at a desk with a laptop, keyboard, typewriter or even a pen and paper and just starts to write. Then magically a few hours or even days later there's a perfect story on stacks of white paper or written in a program and then the writer leans back in their chair, smiles and congratulates themselves on a job well done.

If only it were that simple.

When I tell you writing is stressful, I mean it. When I say you constantly doubt every sentence you form on the page, it's the truth. Now every writer is different in how they start that nice book in your hands or on your e-reader. Each of them goes through a process. Now I can only give you mine, but it's not the fanciful life you see in movies or on TV when they depict writers.

The first thing I do is decide what kind of story I am writing? For me mysteries are the best kind of story. It engages the reader to not only follow the plot, but try to guess who did it, or how, or even why. I think even the best stories from other genres include a touch of mystery in them.

So now you know what kind of plot you're writing. So where do we go from here? The next thing I do is create my protagonist, or main character if you will. Sounds easy right? Well once you decide male, female or even go outside typical gender norms that's when the real creation begins. You need to give them an archetype. Are they a hero? Anti-hero? Vigilante? Scoundrel? What flaws do they possess and what drives them to do what they do? This is all a part of creating your character's psychology. Not to mention you need to know their ethnic background, religion or lack thereof and how those things inform the person that they are. We haven't even touched on what they look like. It's all a process and it's time consuming.

Now that you have your main character, and then you've created supporting characters and let's not forget your antagonist or villain...or villains, now we need to know the setting. Where does this take place?

I'm not a wealthy person. Just like your every day Joe, I worry about bills, rent and what do I do when my car breaks down? So it's not like I can travel to places I've never been when I want. Since we're talking about how I write I won't even get into what you might have to do if the place you're writing about doesn't even exist. So let's stay in the real world. How do you make it so the places you write about feel real? Well if you can't travel and you don't want to write about the same place in every book then you turn to the writer's best friend, research.

You're going to want to research everything about the city or town you place your story in. Look up maps, check travel guides to get the feel of the place. Even watch some videos of how the streets look and the people walking them. You are going to take notes on all of this. The more real you can write it, the better.

So a month or more has passed and now you've got your genre, characters and you know where they're going to be. Next is the plot. Mysteries are very simple in this regard. Your plot starts with a crime. Usually it's murder. Now there are different types of murder and different reasons for them. So you're going to want to make sure you find out as much about them as you can because your story hinges on the crime being perpetrated being both engaging and believable. So why was it committed? Greed, Revenge and Love are the main reasons why people commit murder, unless of course your villain is a serial killer and that's another ball of wax you'll need to research.

Once you've decided on the why, you're going to have to figure out the how. This might be the most important thing you do. Remember, believable, but engaging. You'll want to take your time figuring this out, because the more interesting you can make it, the better your story will be.

Next you'll want to create a murder board. Yeah, just like on TV. It'll help keep your facts straight as you write and it'll put all the characters involved in a visual place you can reference. You'll need to show evidence, suspects, witnesses and relationships between each. Also, a timeline of when the victim died is important.

So now you're probably a little over two months into creating this world and you have pretty much everything, well everything except a story. Now some writers will dive right in, but I tend to be more cautious. So the next thing I'd suggest is an outline. I do a chapter by chapter overview. Usually about two paragraphs per chapter just hitting the main story points. Once I finish the outline I leave it for at least 48 hours, then re-read it and make changes.

Okay so now you might be about 3 months into the process or more and if you're satisfied with everything it's time to start writing. Generally I'd recommend 4-6 hours per day, but not everyone can spare that. You'll want to remain consistent though and keep a flow to avoid writer's block. Here is the most important advice I can give you, just get the story out. Don't worry about typos or spelling. Don't worry about formatting or anything outside of getting it onto the page. This is the first draft, it's going to be imperfect.

After languishing over your manuscript for another two months or more you're going to take a break of at least a few days. Flush all that stuff out of your head. You're going to want to come into the next part with fresh eyes because you're going to read your story. Every line on every page and you're going to ask yourself what needs to be added? Am I answering all the questions a reader might have? This is the additive draft. You're going to add descriptions and dialogue and everything you can think of in this draft.

Then another break. When you come back this time, you're going to read it again, but now the thought will be, does what is happening move the characters, story or themes of my book forward? You're going to remove or re-write anything that doesn't add value to the story. This is the subtractive/re-write draft. It's important that when you're writing a story that's over sixty thousand words that it's still tight and paced well. You don't want your reader feeling like the story is dragging or boring.

Now, you can take a break for this last part or not, up to you. The last thing you do is a corrective draft. Get your spelling and grammar check ready, and go through the entire thing making sure that the check does exactly what it's supposed to. Don't just click, read what it's doing and make sure that it doesn't take something out of context.

Now, roughly six months after you started your story is finally done, but wait, there's more. You've read it over at least 3 times now, but you're the author so there's a bias. We need to eliminate that from the equation. So here's the scariest thing you're going to do besides publishing your story to the public. You're going to give your story to someone you trust. Usually this is an editor. However, editors are expensive. So if you know someone who writes well and you trust them enough, let them read it and make notes and tell them you want brutal honesty.

It's not an easy thing to do, but you're going to take those notes and consider everything that's said. Dismiss nothing out of hand. Make the changes you need to and then and only then are you finished. You can now submit to a publisher or self-publish.

I wish I could tell you that was the end of it, but it isn't. There is marketing and promotion that needs to be done to sell your new creation. If you're lucky enough to get a publisher they will do a lot of the work for you, but publishers aren't easy to snag. I hope who ever reads this gets a better understanding of writing long form works or at least has a laugh at my pain. However the selling of a your book isn't the point, it's an accomplishment unto itself that you even made it. Most people give up before they've written a single word. So if you plan to do this, do it and don't look back. Be creative.

I wish you all the best in everything you do, until next time.