How do you write?

Do you start at the beginning and work through.

Do you write scenes in a particular order.

If you have a great idea for the end of the book do you write that, then work towards it, rewriting it to keep everything tied in?

Are there certain scenes you must have, and you bend the story around them?

For a while, I've been writing whatever came at the top of my head.

Nowadays, after revising so many times, I've been planning things out, and start working to beginning to end.

I think there was a thread similar to this one. Of course, I could be wrong...

edited 28th Jan '12 5:38:13 PM by Masterofchaos

Absolutely, most definitely not. I'll post a longer response later, but I can say right now that this sort of thing is totally antithetical to how I write.

I create a start point.

Then I write out or simply devise and store in my head a bunch of scenes for later and start working on bridging the gaps. In practice, by the time I get to most of them they no longer make sense and are discarded in favor more natural progression.

However having the objects to work towards, even if they're not valid when I get there, is a useful tool for breaking a story down into manageable chunks of writing time.

I usually write from the beginning to the end, although I'm thinking of switching it up for the current draft I'm on.

I've usually been percolating a story for quite some time before I actually start writing it, and probably have some amount of outlining/brainstorming work; from there, I just write things in order. This is probably influenced by the fact that most of my prospective writing right now is fanfic which would be published serially.

No particular order, except maybe that the first chapter or prologue gets written first. This works well for me since I usually end up rewriting scenes as a character's personality makes itself more apparent in other scenes I've written.

Once characters are actually developed then the writing becomes a bit more orderly. Not a lot more though.

U usually start from the point I found the most interesting and work on from there. Later I go and fill up the beginning and everything in between.

How I write:

• Step 1: Daydream until an idea comes to mind (this can be a very lengthy process)
• Step 2: Start from the beginning, assuming you have access to a computer; writing in notebooks can prove...messy and problematic in the long run
• Step 3: Realize that the stuff you daydreamed makes little sense/ is utterly irritating once written; delete and revise as needed
• Step 4: Drift into madness and paranoia as you continuously edit your work, to the point where you think "I need to change THAT line" minutes after waking up in the morning
• Step 5: Edit until your eyes start to hate you
• Step 6: Don't profit, but have a momentary brush with self-satisfaction until you realize something else needs to change (and lament that you didn't make an outline beforehand...even though you'd just change that as you went along)

There's also a liberal application of hot dogs at every step. But, details.

edited 28th Jan '12 8:09:55 PM by Voltech44

Once I pass the stage of finally realizing that an idea or concept is workable, I start taking notes. Lots of them. In notebooks. Messy as they may be, I always start everything in longhand. It works better for me.

I'm always consumed by a writing project, especially in the early phases when everything is new and a bunch of details want to pour out at once. Depending on how long or ambitious the project is, I spend a fair amount of time discovery writing to make sure everything is in place.

I make very detailed outlines and keep sheets with information about my characters, theme, setting, and scene order, so once I get to writing, I choose the scene I want to write first, beginning, middle, or end. When something is "finished," I set it aside, do something else, and go back to edit and rewrite a few weeks later.

edited 28th Jan '12 8:19:17 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

When actually writing, I write episodes/books/chapters/whatever from beginning to end in chronological order.

Before putting words to Word, I'll usually think an ending I want to get to or alternatively a specific event that defines the part. Then I think of a beginning to get to said event or ending as a stepping stone. Then I connect the two many times resorting to Writing by the Seat of Your Pants. (I never outline and I only make notes for stuff that is worth writing down to save for later, mostly Worldbuilding stuff.)

1. Pull a random idea from my endlessly flowing fountain of ideas. Usually the idea is a basic premise or character(s). I do not refine this premise, I merely add to it. As a result my plots sound absolutely stupid until seen in action. I consider this to be part of my personal style.
2. Establish a general conflict.
3. Write it all. In order. This is most time-consuming part, since I tend to lack motivation to do this in more than a few sittings. That said, I write this all as it comes to me.
4. Revise and refine story so it makes sense.

edited 28th Jan '12 9:48:37 PM by burnpsy

Oh, in terms of ideas, I usually start with a setting, a character, or a basic plot. And then I spend the next few days brainstorming it out.

I start from a single work of art that drew my interest—a comic, a painting, a song . . . From there, I flesh out and deconstruct what that work's creator didn't think of or didn't cover in depth. I develop basic conceptions of who the characters will be, how they will behave, and what will happen in each chapter.

Then I write chapter-by-chapter, from the beginning to the end, and my characters start doing things that change my opinion of them. I go back and revise over and over to fit my new conceptions, and I discard my plans for later chapters, replacing them with new ones. (The standard change is that I give a character a tragic flaw, then unintentionally give him the opportunity to overcome it.)

Edit: As an example, Powerless started from a Youtube video called "Master of Your Fate." I decided to have my villain toy with five characters, one by one, defeating or failing to defeat them according to both their own flaws, and his capacity to gauge their reactions. Justice League convinced me that a series of dreams would be a good setup with which to do this, so I planned one dream for each character and each chapter, picking out what I considered an interesting assortment of outward personas and inner weaknesses (with a sixth chapter at the end in which the survivors woke to fight the villain.)

Once I started to write the story, none of the five changed their base personalities—it was actually the villain who fleshed himself out. Chapter 3 required him to act in a kindly manner towards one of the characters for his own ulterior motives, and I had to decide whether or not he was acting. When I realized that he was more interesting if he genuinely wanted to help her, I started thinking about why he was doing all of this, and what he really wanted. In place of the original ending, I had the two characters who escaped his control enter his dream, defeating him there through understanding rather than force of arms. This spared not only his life, but the lives of the captives who, in the original outline, he would have sacrificed in a vain bid to save himself (though in the new draft, he would no longer have been capable of throwing aside lives so casually.)

edited 28th Jan '12 10:14:50 PM by feotakahari

Basically, I'll have a flash of inspiration, and I'll try to design something that incorporates it. I might even try to weave several of those together, and once that's done, I will create a plot and setting around everything.

• Have a dream or idea

• Write it down

• Depending on what it looks like, it might be the beginning of a book, or an ending, or some bit in the middle.

• Extrapolate events and characters.

• Refine.

• Write it all down.

I first get a random image. Eventually I sort out the random images that have a common theme to them. Then I come up with reasons why these random images are the way they are. After that, I start noting my ideas down. Somewhere in there I assign something like a "plot".

No, this process is not an exact science, and I think that's exactly what's right about it.

1. Think of making interesting characters, a theme (inspired by something already seen) and set a setting. Work out a story from there.

2. Flesh out the interesting parts that comes to your head. Just write that down. (Don't forget to do some research in anything you're not familiar about. You don't want your readers to look at you as if you Did Not Do The Research).

3. Outline and work out the story in anachronic order. Try filling the beginning and the end first. Especially the end if you trouble ending the story without making an asspull or whatever crap you churn out at the end of the day.

4. From point 3, fill in the missing links and adjust the story so that it make sense or is Fridge Brilliance in later plot points.

5. Make revisions and check for any grammatical errors and plot hole. Rinse and repeat this step until there's nothing wrong.

I don't believe in One True Writing Method, and every story I wrote was written slightly differently.

One story I've been planning on and off since 2007, and I know everything one could possibly want to know about that story and the characters that drive it, but I don't have much of it written down. Actually, I have to say that having it all planned out so extensively makes me feel under too much pressure to actually sit down and write it. I can't get rid of the feeling that I won't be able to do it justice.

Another story I brainstormed for a few months, and then started writing an extremely detailed outline, in a linear fashion, just trying to get my characters from point A to point B to point C and so on. I soon noticed it veering off to the left field and becoming something completely different from what I wanted it to be, so I just printed it out and put it in the drawer. I'll get back to that outline sometime, it wasn't bad.

Yet another story I started by assembling a very long list of tropes that I wanted it to include, spend half a year brainstorming on how to make all the pieces fit together, and then wrote the first four chapters during the 2010 Nanowrimo. After that, I kept writing in out-of-order scenes, some of them directly inspired by tropes, some springing from the characters and the setting. I'm working on this story at the moment and I'm almost done organizing everything I have written into arcs and super-arcs, and will soon start filling in the blanks.

A yet another story I started writing by hastily throwing together two ideas I had written on pieces of paper. I wrote it without allowing myself to plan or think ahead at all so, obviously, it was written in a linear fashion, and it went well enough. I eventually abandoned it because it was in English prose, and English grammar is incomprehensible.

I also have loads of story ideas written on scraps of paper, throwing around in my drawer. Some of them are the opening scene, some are a loose outline, and one is just a list of characters. And a yet another one is a long list of books, because it's supposed to be historical fiction. I can bet that if I get down to writing any of them, they would be written completely differently from how I've written the stories that came before them.

edited 29th Jan '12 4:26:48 AM by fanty

I sort of just wing it first, then revise as needed.

Hmm. I take a character/multiple characters with a relationship, either by modifying an existing character or importing a wholly new one. Over several weeks I play with them in my head as entertainment until they begin to get a personality, and a couple of events solidify about them.

Usually at this point I write down any particularly striking scenes I've produced, and the process continues on for weeks until I get sick of the characters. I usually don't make much effort at getting a beginning, middle and end of a plot here, and they usually don't amount to much.

Very rarely do they get to the third stage, which is where I start at the beginning and attempt to hammer it into a proper story.

I think of a character first—-think of what makes him special—why people would be interested in getting to know this character and why I would spend weeks writing about him. Then the rest follows naturally—-conflict, motivation, a few plot ideas.

Hope this helps!

________________________________ “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” - Oscar Wilde / Check out my blog: http://www.usbmemorysticks.net

edited 12th Feb '12 9:46:26 AM by Brilivant

Pen. Paper. Sometimes a computer might be involved.

You forgot the chair.

I dunno.