What’s Your Approach To Writing?

 

What’s your approach to writing? I was asked this question recently and found that my answer was not as short and sweet as I thought it would be. The way an author approaches writing is not something that is based on genre or subgenre; however it is dependent on how one transfers that creative idea to the written page. In this blog post I’m going to go over a couple different methods. One of them is a reflection of how I proceed with my own craft while the other is another author I communicate with on a regular basis. So the two approaches to writing that I am covering today are the Planning Writer and the Spontaneous Writer.

 

The Planning Writer

This approach is as the title suggests, planned. This type of author will have an idea, grab the closest piece of paper, pencil, pen, computer, laptop, or tablet and begin expanding on that idea immediately. Plot trees are drawn, arcs are established, and at the less hectic part of this process some will even summarize each chapter. All that compact brainstorming and BOOM a novel’s outline is born. Then over the next several months (possibly more depending on how and when they get their creative writing time in) they will follow said outline to the novel’s completion. I can completely see the appeal and effectiveness of this method. It’s organized and structured which helps you stay on track with the main plot of the story. I wish I could use this type of writing approach! I can absolutely see the advantages to it. Being an organized person, one would think this approach would be the one that works for me…but it isn’t which brings us to our next approach.

 

The Spontaneous Writer

This approach is also as the title suggests, spontaneous. This writing approach I know a little more about because it’s the one I have a natural default for. There are no plot trees, no chapter summaries, and no predetermined story arcs. In fact the only thing that is similar between the two approaches is grabbing anything you can get your hands on to scrawl the idea down. For example, I get most of my ideas for my novel premises from, don’t laugh, dreams. When I got the idea for Pinnacle and Kaya’s story I woke up in the early morning hours scurried into the dining room and scrawled it on a napkin (No Joke). Then I went back to bed. I got up the next morning sat at my computer, opened a blank word document, stared for a moment, and then started writing. I knew the story would be about a girl who had special powers and whose parents had been brutally murdered by a supernatural creature that would follow her from Washington to Oklahoma. Beyond that I had no idea. It just came to me as I wrote it, literally off the top of my head. It was like watching a movie in my mind’s eye and then trying to write everything I saw as quickly as possible.

 

The Pros and Cons

The Planned Approach Cons: With the planned approach I can’t see any cons that are viable and not just my personal opinion.

The Planned Approach Pros: It’s a solid, smart approach and from what I’ve found, quite common. By planning your story you have a guide, and a definite sense of direction with where your story needs to go and how it needs to end. You can see the whole progression right there and front of you at its basic skeletal level. Now all that’s left to do is “flesh” it out establish a pulse and bring it to life with the words you craft around the main points. You always have an idea about what happens next.

The Spontaneous Approach Cons: There are a few cons with this method. First you have no specific direction with where you are going in your story. Because there is no road map with where you are driving your story, there will be a greater chance for plot holes which you will have to go back and fix later. That in turn makes the Beta reader and editing process much longer. Another con I have run into is getting stuck! Not saying the planners don’t get stuck, I am sure they do. But if you write spontaneously you have no next plot point to refer back to and help you get back on track and that…well that really stinks.

The Spontaneous Approach Pros: There is and excitement you get as a reader when you’re reading and have no idea what is going to happen next. Writing spontaneously gives you that exact same feeling because you don’t know what is going to happen until you actually pen it. I had people ask me questions like, “Is so and so going to die?” I couldn’t tell them because I hadn’t written that far yet. (My son read every chapter of Pinnacle as I wrote it so questions I didn’t know the answer to were asked regularly!) Another pro is you are not limited by predetermined plot points. You can literally take your story anywhere and not have to worry about straying from a plot tree.

 

Everyone has their own approach to writing and there are other things besides just the above mentioned that play into the process. Like chapter length, some authors determine that aspect based on chapter word count and some go off how many pages are written, but that’s a post for another time. Do you have another writing approach, a question or comment? Please feel free to voice it! I always want to hear your thoughts!