You come up with an idea for a book, now what?
My Process
I write everything down in a notebook that spews from my brain. Yes, notebooks spew from my brain. :-) I have no idea what the plot is or how the story is going to progress and at this point I don’t think about it. I know that will come later. All I know is that this is a cool idea I got. “A kid takes a disadvantage and turns it into his advantage.”
Next I organize my ideas in some kind of order and the plot starts to grow.
Now that I’ve got a basic plot I get another blank piece of paper and start coming up with chapters. In one or two sentences I write down the point I want to get across that supports the plot.
1) Matt was a talented athlete as a kid.
2) Matt wants to play pro baseball.
3) Matt greatest plays in high school baseball
4) Matt’s devastating injury on the last game of the year.
I create a list of chapters headings until I can see a beginning-middle and the end to the book. It is important to have an idea where you want to be in the plot by the middle of the book, it can change later. My experience is that I come up with twenty to thirty chapters.
For me it’s a matter of what comes next. How do I get from chapter one to the middle of the book? I find that my character will decide that. When you start writing the chapters you might find you have to add a chapter to get your charter to the next plot point.
Then I focus on my first chapter. If it doesn’t flow right out onto the paper I think of how I’m going to get to my plot point for that chapter. An event with a beginning a middle and an end. It’s a rough draft the details can come later. Sometimes I’ll be three chapters away and get an idea and come back to chapter one and fill in some more.
The writing gets easier and easier as I go. It’s all about what comes next. Once I’ve gone through the manuscript I take a long good look at all the chapter titles at once. I find the holes in the story line and fill them in with more chapters. Some chapters split in two while others I take right out.
Then I rewrite and rewrite for specifics. I’ll rewrite once just looking to support the plot. I’ll rewrite another time just to make sure characters are seeing different colors and smelling sweet and sour smells. Then I’ll rewrite to detail certain descriptions to enhance the moment in the story.
To say I write like this all the time would be another fictional story but I do write like this most of the time. I believe everybody has their own way of writing but I also believe in the writing craft and still have a lot to learn. I hoped I’ve helped.
Keep Writing,
Matt T. Schott
Thanks for sharing your process Matt - I do something similar, keeping track of any/all ideas in a journal that gets translated to a spreadsheet that gets translated into word files when something sparks the original idea into a little more shape... A lot of my ideas also start as fairly random tidbits - altho some come to me (seriously) in dreams or after random things happen/are heard in the world, and those often include surprisingly elaborate bits of description, characterization, and even dialogue. "Process" is a wonderful, mysterious, random-ass thing, eh?? :)
ReplyDeleteThanks again for sharing - always interesting to me to hear how another writer does his thing!
Actually Jill the idea for my first book came from a dream I had every Thanksgiving as a kid. I think the smell of the turkey sparked the same dream every year.
ReplyDeleteHi Matt.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. I have a similar method. Because I like having a Prologue and an Epilogue, I have about sixteen to seventeen chapters in my books. My characters drive my stories because they have strong personalities and they talk to me. They usually let me know what they would like to do. I also make notes but I used Evernote to make notes in. In Evernote, I can give each book a notebook and separate them nicely.
I really enjoyed your article.
Ciao,
Patricia