4 ms·
What works for me* : 1. Make a plan. 2. Mostly ignore the plan. 3. Feel. Feel what your characters are feeling. Feel what you want the reader to feel. 4. Wr
by cgriswald 10y ago
What works for me* :
1. Make a plan.
2. Mostly ignore the plan.
3. Feel. Feel what your characters are feeling. Feel what you want the reader to feel.
4. Write, even if you aren't feeling.
5. Iterate. Be fearless in throwing things out that don't work. Rewrite an entire work if you have to.
Some of these "greats" act like they completely wing it. Stephen King, for instance, has some really great writing. He's a man really in touch with his emotions and can, through his writing, cause those feelings to resonate in you. But, his lack of planning leads, in my opinion, to weak endings that are emotionally unsatisfying and sometimes nonsensical.
*By works for me, I mean my best fiction writing comes out of this, not that it's any good or published.
Edit: Formatting
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jacobheric 10y agoI always thought King's writing could stand to be edited down (a lot). But I feel that about most genre fiction. I find it stifling as a reader especially when characters thoughts and emotions are over described. Usually a simple detail about their appearance, their manner, or similar is sufficient to clue me into what's going on inside. And the uncovering of those clues makes for a much more enjoyable reading experience.
- bovermyer 10y agoHave you read anything by Robert E. Howard? I imagine you might rather enjoy his works.
- jacobheric 10y agoI'll check it out. Thanks! Some of my favorite reading is genre fiction that trims the fat and floats above the rest of the genre. This seems to fit that bill.
- rpgmaker 10y agoAny recommendations?
- jacobheric 10y agoYes, I recently stumbled upon Black Wings Has My Angel by Eliot Chaze. Great, obscure and underrated crime/noir/pulp novel. It transcends the genre. It's somehow both more gritty and more literary than the more famous Hammett and Chandler and similar stuff.
- bovermyer 10y agoREH, most famous for the Conan the Barbarian short stories, has a visceral writing style. I'd start with one of the Conan omnibuses, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-Cimmerian-Original-Adventures/dp/0345461517/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1470229829&sr=8-10&keywords=conan+the+barbarian https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-Cimmerian-Original-Adven...
- rpgmaker 10y agoI agree. Ironically (since he is associated with the 'gardeners' type in the piece), his writing feels too methodical and lineal to me. Also very repetitive. Of his books I haven't liked the first one. The same happens to me with Neil Gaiman, who seems very heavily influenced by King. To me their style of writing is almost interchangeable.
- douche 10y agoA lot of Stephen King's best writing, he was pretty much out of his mind the whole time on PBR and cocaine. For instance, not really having any recollection of penning Cujo[1]. His later stuff feels much more planned, in that it kind of all ties into his big meta-project of the Dark Tower, even the early stand-alone stuff, that he more or less retcons into that universe. [1] http://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/king-forgets-cujo.2225/ http://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/king-forgets-cuj...
- jacobheric 10y agoI actually think that's not a bad way to write! Whatever gets you into the zone or flow. Of course, you have to have the discipline to go back and edit with clear eyes later. There is a famous (mostly misattributed) quote to that effect: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84190-sometimes-i-write-drunk-and-revise-sober-and-sometimes-i http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84190-sometimes-i-write-drun... Though Hemingway didn't say that, he was definitely a merciless editor of his own work. I dropped in on this (http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/ernest-hemingway http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/ernest-hemingway) exhibit recently that had early drafts of some of his most famous stories and books and it was remarkable how many whole pages and chapters he chopped out just prior to publication.
- rpgmaker 10y agoI have read about that. And while it would explain the repetitiveness it's independent of how his writing appears to me. Needless to say, a lot of people disagree with my view of his writing.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoMe too! I find myself skimming when I read his books.
- Kuiper 10y agoAs referenced in the submission article, George R.R. describes two approaches two writing: >"I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect." These two approaches are often referred to as "outlining" vs "discovery writing." My view is that these approaches don't describe two categories of writers so much as they describe two points along a spectrum, and most writers lie somewhere between the two extremes. For example, Brandon Sanderson says that he extensively plans/outlines his plots and fantasy settings, but he tends to "discovery write" his characters: he will frequently write multiple versions of the opening chapters of a book to see which character fits best for the story he is writing, sort of like auditioning different actors for the role. Brandon didn't plan the Mistborn trilogy with a female protagonist; rather, he tried several different versions of the opening chapters, each featuring a different character in the role of protagonist, and he found that the story worked best with a girl in the lead role. He went on to make several significant adjustments to the events of the story to fit with his character choice (he has sometimes jokingly described Mistborn book 1 as "Lord of the Rings meets My Fair Lady"), but the world and the overarching plot structure still matched his original plan for the series.