Story Systems, Part 4/5

So far, I’ve discussed how I’ve started to
look at writing stories, and a way to prepare to write a first draft and how to
edit it once it’s in existence.

(As for how to make the first draft? Just
type!)

Here’s how I’ve developed this way of
writing, and why I think it works.

Last year, I started sending stories to the
most prestigious mags I could find. This made me terrified of writing badly. Especially
if I combined this with reading the magazines while writing a first draft. “Look
at this garbage I’m writing compared to what these writers are capable of!” I
thought.

Anyway, my fear of bad writing meant that
when I’d written what I thought was a finalised story, I didn’t want to probe
it too hard lest it fall apart.

I also came up with the idea that preparing
as much as possible before starting a story made me a bad writer.

I was probably thinking of this quote: “[Chekhov’s]
friend and fellow writer Vladimir Korolenko wrote in his memoirs that when
asked how he wrote his stories, Chekhov laughed, snatched up the nearest object
- an ashtray - and said that if Korolenko wanted a story called The Ashtray, he
could have it the next morning.”

I’m willing to bet Chekhov spent most of
that day taking notes though! Doing a bit of free association, thinking of the
role of ashtrays in his life. Did anything curious happen to him involving an
ashtray, or when one was in the room? What is his opinion of them, of smokers?

Ray Bradbury did the same thing. He started
off writing stories starting from just the titles. So I thought, “This is how
you’re supposed to find the good stories.”

I do think the best moments of my writing
come straight from the subconscious. When I’m writing a first draft, they’re
when the story seems to “take off”, writes itself without me. (I hope you’ve
had this feeling! It’s the best.) They’re the parts of my writing that even I
can’t explain. But when I look back on when those moments occurred, they were
when I’d finally found the time to write a story I was super excited about,
because I strongly suspected that it led somewhere interesting. I’d been
thinking about the story, or the topic the story is about, for months—not
consciously, just in the back of my mind along with all my other thoughts. All
those cumulative fragments of thought poured out for those stories. However,
conscious effort, in the form of preparation, can be done to increase the
chance of a first draft “taking off.”

This emphasis on preparation is present in this
blog post, which is one of the best things I read about writing last year.

His advice about the characters didn’t
quite click for me, which is why I prefer to think of story preparation as a series
of questions to answer, rather than real people to interrogate.

I even have another dry scientific analogy
here!

Crystallisation is when solid crystals come
out of a solution. This can be done “spontaneously”, just by waiting in hope
that crystals will appear in the right conditions; or, by the introduction of
“seed crystals.” Seed crystals are small crystals of whatever compound is in
the solution, and they’re added so the crystallisation process has something to
grab onto. This is a much faster process!

So, if you make a small version of “story
stuff” before you begin the story creation process, you will create the story
faster.

This isn’t the same as predetermining where
the story should go. Having a planned trajectory, so you don’t go nuts in every
direction, is placing a seed crystal in a solution. You might get there without
it, but you’ll get there faster and with less effort if you have a good seed