Archive for the ‘creativity’ tag
Process Of Writing A Book
On Writing A Book
So, how does one go about Writing A Book?
Not an easy question, and certainly one with no straight-forward answers. Everyone has a different approach to writing, and some indeed may find they can just sit down and write for days on any subject that comes to their head. Personally, I find I like to have thought through what I am going to put to page before I begin to sit down and write what comes to mind. I am one of these obsessive planners: I love to have a plan of my book in chapter summary form before I even begin writing it. I find this not only helps me to maintain focus, but also means I am motivated by the fact I have the ‘big picture’ arranged in my head, even if the specific details aren’t always there. I find this approach very useful to my style of writing, and more specifically to my genre of writing: fantasy. In other genres I can see how authors could get away with writing just whatever takes their fancy up to a point as far as characterisation etc goes. With me, as my work is mainly plot driven, I need to know exactly what events are going to happen and and most importantly when, so I can maintain a coherent narrative and stick closely to the vision of the work that I have in my mind. I’ve also recently, with this latest book in particular, taken to drawing lots of maps with arrows all over them so I can keep a track of which characters are where and where they are meant to be by certain parts of the series. This is one of the main problems in writing a trilogy I find: consistency. Consistency is so hard to maintain as it is with my ever improving as a writer, but with a trilogy such as this it is critical I maintain narrative and plot consistency as well as (I hope) some form of consistency in my writing. I think perhaps with my first trilogy, there is an evident improvement in my writing as the Books progress, but hopefully this isn’t too obvious to the casual reader. I certainly don’t think it should be, but then I am after all my greatest critic.
So how does the process work then?
Well for me, as I have already stated, it begins with a plan; an outline of the chapters or ‘sections’ written up into chronological order with as much detail as I think I need so that I know what needs to happen and when. This plan is often added to as I go, and sometimes I find that a very small section which I envisaged would only take a single short chapter turns into something like two or three long chapters; and then sometimes I plan a big event that ends up not as big word-count wise as I had initially envisaged. Over the course of the years I have learnt to get used to these little vagaries in the planning process. Indeed, I now consider them important means of ensuring my writing isn’t too regimented. I do after all, like to have some flexibility while sticking to the big picture.
Once my plan is done, I set about the long and often arduous task of actually writing the thing. This can take anything up to a year, depending on just how much work I have outside of my writing, and this latest book especially, is taking me particularly long as I am so involved in university work and such like that I haven’t been able to dedicate as much time to it as I would like. You may be interested to know at this point, that I have taken to hand-writing all my work in pencil before typing it up onto the computer. This is actually just a personal preference on my part, and there is certainly no right way of doing it: I like the ‘natural’ feel of pencils and dislike the act of writing at a computer so I try and avoid it as much as possible while the core creative process is taking place. This does of course mean I have more work in a way as I have to then type the thing up (and decipher my frankly appalling draft-writing), but it is a sacrifice I am more than willing to make in light of the final product.
Once the first draft is all typed up, I then proceed to print off my draft and bind it together with treasury tags (a task in itself!) and so set about the task of first draft edit. It is here I begin to look at my long list of ‘editing notes’ that I create while in the process of writing and address issues that, at the time, I thought needed more work. This is also the time I ‘fill in the blanks’ of sections I just couldn’t manage to write at the time. In my very first book especially I remember a part right near the end where I simply wrote ‘[INSERT FIGHT SCENE HERE]‘. It might seem quite humorous to the outsider, but I have found this is actually quite an important technique. The ability to just skip past parts you can’t quite get to grips with at the time can be really useful for keeping you motivated to finish the work so you can go back to it and look at it at another time when your mind is more focussed. In this latest book I note I have done this twice: one for a dream sequence, and one for the very final act that closes the book. I know what I want in these sections – it’s just I couldn’t put the words on the page to describe them at the time. It is here in this first draft stage then, that I begin to address some of these many issues that have cropped up during the course of writing.
And so we reach the stage I am now at with my current book. I have edited the first draft and the edits now need to be transferred onto the computer edition. Once I have done this I have a few things that I can sort out ‘on-screen’ using the invaluable find function in MS Office, and then I am going to do what I call ‘close edits’ on certain sections that I feel need particular emphasis. This means printing out short sections and doing perhaps three or four additional drafts on these areas before adding them back to the main manuscript so that I may finally print my second draft and approach the book again as a whole entity. After this, I will often find myself doing perhaps another few edits before the book nears what I finally want as my finished product. Because I am so ahead of my writing though, I aim to have the trilogy written before I Publish this first book of the new trilogy so I can make absolutely sure that there are no plot consistency errors or characterisation errors. Unless you have actually attempted to Write A Book yourself, you perhaps won’t understand the effort that these things involve. I say this: you really need to be completely on top of absolutely EVERYTHING you write. You must after all take responsibility for every single mark on the page, and especially for me, being my own editor, I find myself constantly thinking of small things like ‘Is X character still wearing a ring’ ‘Has Y still got his sword’, ‘Which tavern was it they visited last time round?’ etc etc.
Certainly no easy task…
About the Author
Born and raised in deepest, darkest Thanet, M.J.Ryder is a student writer currently living and working in London. When not busy sub-editing and writing a monthly column in Brunel University magazine LeNurb, M.J.Ryder is kept busy by various writing projects that include his first children’s book A Door to Nowhere and his teen fantasy series The Powers that be trilogy. Aside from Writing Books, M.J.Ryder is also an avid blogger and a DS reviewer for Nintendo Life, the largest independent Nintendo website in the U.K.
For more information, visit www.mjryder.net
|
|
Books for Young Readers $19.99 Authors of books for children and young people discuss their works and the writing process. Authors include: Rafi Zabor, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for “The Bear Comes Home;” Christopher Curtis, Newberry Award winner for “Bud, Not Buddy;” Gloria Whelan, winner of a National Book Award for young people’s literature for “Homeless Bird;” Lynne Cheney, author of “A is for Abigail: An Almanac of … |
|
|
Writing for Children : THE WRITING PROCESS (Grades K-4) … |
|
|
Charlie Rose – John Grisham (January 29, 2008) $1.99 … |
|
|
HOW PICTURE BOOKS ARE MADE The Process from the Birth of an Idea to a Printed Book (Kidz Investigate Series) Announcing three new learning videos with a unique twist. The Kidz Investigate videos are designed for children and hosted by children. Young audiences everywhere will be captivated as they watch the hosts investigate a variety of topics that are designed to interest children. These inquisitive young investigators probe how to become a successful writer, the life of an award-winning author, and ho… |
|
|
Savvy Scribe Writing Series 4-Book Set $69.99 Strengthen you students’ ability to produce effective, creative writing with Savvy Scribe activities! Writing Process includes: Prewriting, First Draft, Editing and Revision, Peer Revision, and Final Draft. Writing Style includes: Voice, Ideas, Organization, Conventions, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency. Creative Writing includes: Basics, Style, and Genre. Literary Terms includes: devices that ar… |
|
|
TEACHING SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS Perfect for school or home, this book from Kelley Wingate Math and Test Taking series is designed to help students strengthen conceptual and applied mathematical skills, and reinforce useful test-taking strategies…. |