Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 24

Process questions, or, making it up

Process feels unique and individual, because it is, just as the cottonwood tree in my front yard is unique and individual, different from all other cottonwoods and even more different from other species of trees. But just as all trees have roots and bark and perform photosynthesis in their leaves or needles, there are fundamental similarities in different creative processes. We all have to make it up at some point.

Making it up – whether one is making up the beginning or the end, the plot or...

The Ending Process

After last week, I was all set to write a series of posts on ways to make up an ending at different points in the writing process – starting with the ending, making it up in mid-story, pantsing right up to the final chapter, etc.  And then I woke up at 4 a.m. with the realization that there is no difference in the process itself. What’s different is the amount of information the writer has, what constraints they’re mostly stuck with, and where they are on the decision tree.

A writer who’s at...

Enough End to Go On With

In spite of all the writing advice books and blogs and web sites that tell you to start by making up the ending, I can’t think of any professional writers I know who do this in the strictest sense, at least as their regular process. (I’ve known a couple who were struck by an ending-idea for a particular story, but it wasn’t their usual process.)

The vast majority of writers I know start with a character, or a background/setting, or an incident, or some other basic facet of story. The ending d...

To collaborate or not

Every so often a writer runs across someone else’s story that has at its heart an idea they think is brilliant, but which they also think that writer has mishandled for some reason. Most of the time, the writer can take the part of the idea that speaks to them, shake off all the “wrong” bits and pieces, and write their own story. Now and again, though, the idea is so unusual and recognizable that this just isn’t possible.

When the story in question is one that’s been finished and published, t...

Strategy vs. Tactics for Writers

Strategy and tactics aren’t synonyms, though in casual conversation they are often used as if they were. It’s understandable; they’re both about planning your actions so you can win. The difference, as I understand it, is that strategy is about planning to win the war; tactics are about planning to win the battle or encounter.

In other words, strategy is about the big picture – what to do overall; tactics is about the immediate, constantly changing situation right in front of you – how to do...

Questions, questions

I was tootling through a how-to-write site the other day going “yep, nope, nope, yep” when I got to the part where they talked about plotting, and found four pages of questions to help writers “get unstuck” and “come up with great new plot twists.”

Now, when I am plotting, I ask myself a lot of questions. And when I am plot-noodling for other people, I ask them a lot of questions. So the general idea of four pages of plot questions was not at all problematic for me.

The problem was the kind...

Mountain Climbing

When a writer starts writing a novel, he or she is essentially standing at the bottom of a mountain, looking up. That writer is facing a zillion different moving parts that have to come together to make the climb successful, and which parts are important often change as they climb/write. At the beginning of a mountain climb, when you’re hiking up the foothills, you usually don’t need special equipment like ropes and crampons. It’s work, and it gets more and more strenuous as you go on, but yo...

Mailbag – Editing for Seat-of-the-Pants Writers

During the hiatus, I got this interesting email:

“I’m one of those pantsers whose stories get set in concrete the minute they’re written. Oh, I can change the wordings a bit, or move a sentence here or there, but the story is set in my mind. I can rip out whole chunks of it, and when I rewrite them, they come back the same, but with different words. I’m wondering whether you, or someone you know of, has any advice on how to handle that?”

This is interesting largely because I am not a pantser....

Good parts and bad parts

Becoming a professional fiction writer is a lot of work. A lot.

Most people who want to be writers sort of realize this – at least, if they’ve gotten even most of the way through a novel, they’ve experienced just how much work the writing part of it really is. (There’s a reason why nearly every writer knows – and repeats – some version of the famous quote about how to write: “stare at a blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead.”) What many of these folks miss is the rest of the w...

I’m baaaack…

I’m baaaack!

And I want to start by saying thank you to everyone for your condolences and sympathy, and for your understanding about the hiatus. I hadn’t expected it to go on so long, frankly, but I am my father’s executor and it is taking much longer than I expected to get that squared away so that I can actually execute things. (We will not talk, at the moment, about who and what I would like to execute; let’s just say that bureaucracy and non-standardization are pretty high up the list. I...