More on Method

I was talking to my good writer buddy Lisa Hendrix today over coffee, and I was talking about the advice I give on my blog. Lisa said something very, very true…when it comes to classes, and online workshops and blogs…we can’t really teach people how to write.

I can teach you guys how I write, but the thing is, there isn’t really a right way. There are several wrong ways (this includes targeting the wrong thing at the wrong publisher and the like)….heh…but not only one right one.

What I do is my process, and bits and pieces of it may translate to what you do, or it may not. Some writers write scenes down on note cards, others go through a word document and type “chapter one” then a summary of that chapter, “chapter two” a summary of that chapter, and so on.

I am not one of those writers. As I write (and here’s where I start to sound like aliens have landed in my ear and made pilgrimage to my brain) the layers of my characters, the deeper theme, and the plot start to truly reveal themselves to me. I’m not a total panster, but neither am I an organized index card plotter.

Two of the Sassy Sisters are complete pansters. They start with nothing more than a scene, a line, an image, and from there, they write the book. And it works for them. It really does. It wouldn’t work for me, but it’s not wrong.

I tend to have a few scenes in my mind that I know need to be written. And I work at getting my characters to that point. If a key scene in my head demands that my heroine trust my hero implicitly for that scene to occur, that means I know that trust needs to start building, and those scenes, where I’m trust building, I tend to pants…(heh)

I also need to write two or three beginnings before I really understand the characters, and what the book will be about.

There are many and varied methods, and as I’ve mentioned, I think mine tends to shift a bit depending the WIP, but the true essence of how I do it seems to remain the same.

There will be people who tell you that you need to do things a certain way, and while there are general rules to craft, the method is flexible, in my opinion. So never think just because you aren’t numbering scenes on index cards…or if you are…that you’re missing something crucial. It may not be crucial to you or your process.

Another part of my process is having songs for my WIPs. In my current WIP I have one very tortured, tall dark and handsome Frenchman and a heroine with a traumatic past.

Here’s my hero’s song:

And my heroine’s song!