When in doubt, trust the process
Feb. 17th, 2022 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11Every time I get stuck, I end up having to remind myself of what I already know— I need to rely on process to get me writing again. It works every single time, sooner or later, and at this point you’d think I would be able to just zip to it immediately and not waste any more time than I have to!
In both my writing and my teaching of writing, I believe really strongly in developing a process. Inspiration can be fleeting and difficult to control, but if you have a series of steps to work through and questions to ask yourself to prompt ideas, you always have a means to move your creative work forward. I teach this in my classes, and use it in my own craft. But sometimes when I get busy I get stuck, and trip as much as anyone over not feeling like I know what to write next.
I’d recently kind of put my current fan fic in progress The Hemingway Trip aside. Partially out of being busy, and partially because I had a lot of trouble shaping the part of the conversation that was supposed to come next. The arc of it just wasn’t coming, and I put the two chapters containing it on hold for several months. But I have developed a trick bag of methods to try when I’m not sure, and I should know by know that sometimes they’re the only way out of a block.
First, I try to write the bad version of the idea. If you can’t do it the right way, do it the wrong way. Shoot for complete rather than good. You can always fix and develop a piece that exists; you can’t improve nothing at all. Garbage draft first, edit later.
But sometimes I can’t do that! I don’t even know what I’m shooting for with that part, so I can’t even do the bad version because I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve. So I strip it down to lower the bar further. I’m a dramatist by training, so for me I’ve found it’s easier to write out conversations as pure dialogue, as if they were a scene from a play or screenplay. I can add in narration and action later, but if I’m just trying to work out the trajectory of the interaction, simplifying it to dialogue only often makes it easier.
So I tried that— and it still wasn’t quite working! The arc of the dramatic action wasn’t manifesting. The characters were not progressing along the journey in the right way. So I had to take it one step even farther back! I had to just write an OUTLINE of what was supposed to happen. This story by way of example, involving Steve Rogers post-retirement to the midcentury, has him talking Howard Stark through what basically amounts to a midlife crisis. So I wrote stuff like “Here’s where Howard deflects. So Steve had to push harder. Howard finally confesses. Steve reacts with a shock and disapproval that hurts Howard’s feelings. Howard responds with anger at feeling so judged. Steve has to then modulate his response so as not to alienate his friend.” In serious projects, I NEVER get to work without a fully fleshed out outline, but even in these lower-intensity projects it’s sometimes the only way forward.
From the outline, I could work out what emotional beat was supposed to happen when. Knowing the pattern of the action, it became possible to figure out what they should say and write out the shape of the dialogue. Once I had the dialogue nailed down, I could flesh out the action and narration around it. Then I had a rough version of the scene! A bit more editing polish and I had a new chapter! Then another, both of which I’ve posted over the last two weeks. I’m happy with how they came out too!
It never ceases to amaze me how much a process helps. It really provides direction for what to write when you’re not being fired by the pure surge of inspiration. I really have to remember to just immediately start working through it whenever I get stuck.
In both my writing and my teaching of writing, I believe really strongly in developing a process. Inspiration can be fleeting and difficult to control, but if you have a series of steps to work through and questions to ask yourself to prompt ideas, you always have a means to move your creative work forward. I teach this in my classes, and use it in my own craft. But sometimes when I get busy I get stuck, and trip as much as anyone over not feeling like I know what to write next.
I’d recently kind of put my current fan fic in progress The Hemingway Trip aside. Partially out of being busy, and partially because I had a lot of trouble shaping the part of the conversation that was supposed to come next. The arc of it just wasn’t coming, and I put the two chapters containing it on hold for several months. But I have developed a trick bag of methods to try when I’m not sure, and I should know by know that sometimes they’re the only way out of a block.
First, I try to write the bad version of the idea. If you can’t do it the right way, do it the wrong way. Shoot for complete rather than good. You can always fix and develop a piece that exists; you can’t improve nothing at all. Garbage draft first, edit later.
But sometimes I can’t do that! I don’t even know what I’m shooting for with that part, so I can’t even do the bad version because I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve. So I strip it down to lower the bar further. I’m a dramatist by training, so for me I’ve found it’s easier to write out conversations as pure dialogue, as if they were a scene from a play or screenplay. I can add in narration and action later, but if I’m just trying to work out the trajectory of the interaction, simplifying it to dialogue only often makes it easier.
So I tried that— and it still wasn’t quite working! The arc of the dramatic action wasn’t manifesting. The characters were not progressing along the journey in the right way. So I had to take it one step even farther back! I had to just write an OUTLINE of what was supposed to happen. This story by way of example, involving Steve Rogers post-retirement to the midcentury, has him talking Howard Stark through what basically amounts to a midlife crisis. So I wrote stuff like “Here’s where Howard deflects. So Steve had to push harder. Howard finally confesses. Steve reacts with a shock and disapproval that hurts Howard’s feelings. Howard responds with anger at feeling so judged. Steve has to then modulate his response so as not to alienate his friend.” In serious projects, I NEVER get to work without a fully fleshed out outline, but even in these lower-intensity projects it’s sometimes the only way forward.
From the outline, I could work out what emotional beat was supposed to happen when. Knowing the pattern of the action, it became possible to figure out what they should say and write out the shape of the dialogue. Once I had the dialogue nailed down, I could flesh out the action and narration around it. Then I had a rough version of the scene! A bit more editing polish and I had a new chapter! Then another, both of which I’ve posted over the last two weeks. I’m happy with how they came out too!
It never ceases to amaze me how much a process helps. It really provides direction for what to write when you’re not being fired by the pure surge of inspiration. I really have to remember to just immediately start working through it whenever I get stuck.
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