Monday 26 November 2012

A Bit About My Process

    I wanted to talk a bit about where my stories come from, as one is currently stewing in my head not fully formed.

When I have an idea for a story, it comes to me in pictures. I heard a saying a long time ago that goes something like 'people who see things in words should paint and people who see things in pictures should write', and that is totally how I see things. Most of my stories play out like scenes from a tv show or a movie, and my process has a lot to do with writing what I see in my mind.
Putting words to paper, in that case, is not always easy. Sometimes the picture is not fully formed. Sometimes it's only in small snippits that don't quite make sense, which is what's happening now. They relate to backstory's of certain character's from The Series, and I don't know yet if they connect together or not.

I still write it down when it's not fully formed, and I put the scenes in a folder and when they finally fuse together I pull the relevant ones out and help piece together the story. If there are ones I don't use on occasion they are the building blocks of something new.
Or, it all appears in my head, as much of Book 1 did. The early scenes, with the ritual and in the village, all strung together with relative ease. I'd had to rework the story itself to fit into the specific timeline, but once I did much of it appeared fully formed in front of me. There was just a matter of making sure I got everything when I wrote what I saw.
But the ritual scene, which I won't go into great detail about for those who haven't read Book 1, was the first idea that I had and the first thing that I saw, and it was as vivid and as real as if I was standing there watching it happen myself. 

And now, when I go back and reread it I still see those same pictures. Book 1 has stayed rather true to my original vision the way it is now, and it will be interesting to see as I revisit it if any new things will morph together with the old ones, something that I have never done before.

I am sure you are wondering, what happens if you are working on more than one story at a time? I don't do that often, and I haven't ever wrote two stories at the same time. What generally happens is that I am writing one new story and revising one that's already played out. I haven't tried to do that, but it doesn't mean that I won't. But I think it would be difficult to do if both books were in the same genre, and especially in the same series. Because until you've let one story run its course it's hard to work on what comes next.

But that's a lot of babbling on my part. What's stewing in my head is a backstory, that may turn into a full novel. It's been stewing for a long time but I haven't been able to do anything with it, I admit I am a bit stuck these days. I'm wondering if being stuck means it's not meant to be the full novel, but only a very complicated backstory.

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