— Mark Paxson
A couple of years ago, I made a commitment to get more active in local writing groups. I joined one such group. We meet once a month to talk about what we’re doing. offer advice and support to each other, and also organize local events, including a day long conference that was presented this past September.
We are discussing putting on a few events in 2024. Each focusing on different aspects of the writing process. At our last meeting to discuss these events, the President of the group offered up some different ideas. One of them was to focus on “character.”
I wish I had taken notes of what was said about what this event would cover, because I spent the entire conversation thinking “people actually think about these things while they write?” For instance, how to make character drive your story. Do you think about that as you write a story?
Another potential topic was point of view. I kind of get this as a topic, particularly after reading the last manuscript I read for another writer. It definitely had point of view issues, but I don’t know how this topic could be turned into an effective workshop topic.
My approach to POV is to decide what the POV will be when I start writing. Sometimes it’s first person, sometimes third, and sometimes it is multiple POV. One of my novels has a first person POV, but from three different characters’ perspectives in alternating chapters.
Once I decide, I stick with that POV choice and I hardly think about it again as I write. The POV is the POV.
I am intrigued by how different writers approach writing a story. Pantsers versus plotters. Idea boards. Mood boards. Character sketches. Back stories that never make it into the story. Writing from beginning to end versus jumping around. Do you know the ending before you start?
Here’s what I do and what I think about while I write. I get an idea, frequently from a prompt, but occasionally from something I observe or just come up with out of thin air. If the idea intrigues me, I consider whether I want to give it a try. If I do … I just start writing.
I think my typical start is to think of the story in first person, because most of my ideas are about putting a specific person, or type of person, into a specific situation … and then seeing where it takes me. Occasionally, I decide from the outset that third person might work better, or at some point during the wriing, I realize that third person would work better so I convert what I’ve already written to third person and proceed from there.
I almost never know what the ending will be when I start writing. I just finished a draft of a short story. It’s first person and it doesn’t need to be more than that because it’s pretty short and there’s no need for a third person narration. When I started, it was from a prompt, and I had no idea what the story was going to be, except for the prompt to start me off. As I pondered the story, I came up with an idea to go further with the prompt into something, but the end still mystified me.
And at some point, I came up with what I thought would be a great final line, and that guided me towards a potential ending. Except something else happened … I came up with an ending that didn’t match that “great final line,” but I thought this new ending was a better way to end it, so that’s the direction I went in.
But that’s about it in terms of what I think about while writing. I don’t think about “character” and what to do with it. I find a POV and I stick with it. And just see where the words take me.
Maybe this is the difference between being a pantser and a plotter. I’m a pantser, definitely a pantser. Maybe plotters think more about these types of things?
Anyway, do you think about things like this while you’re writing? What do you think about while you’re writing? Do you think while you write? 😉
Writers Supporting Writers 
Just a test run. Having blog response issues lately
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I see you. Whoever you are. 😉
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I learned the various aspects of the craft of fiction in college courses and grad school. I don’t think much about characterization, plotting, and point of view while I’m writing the first draft. I just let what wants to happen happen. I think more consciously about how the various elements of the story work together (or not) when I’m ready for the revision stage. I never know how a story is going to end when I start it. If I did, there would be no point in writing the story. (I know many writers would disagree with me on this one.)
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One of the challenges for me is that when I figure out it is going to end, I lose a bit of interest in writing it.
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I don’t lose interest in writing the story when I know how the story is going to end. I get all bummed out that my characters won’t need me anymore.
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I was struck by how much we are alike in our approach. Thumbs up to you from me! 🙂
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An interesting topic.
Most of my story ideas come from books I read, as in “How would I write a story like this?”
All my stories are in first person. Since we live our lives in first person, it seems to me to be the most natural way to tell a story. The idea of constructing a story using act structure, character development, and all those things I see other writers talk about I somehow find creepy. It seems too artificial. I evolve rather than construct a story, and only when I know it, do I tell it. I evolve it in two phases.
The first is by “daydreaming” about it now and again during the day and when I wake up a night, often for months. I invent and replay scenes in my head over and over again, editing and adding new ones until, Ideally, I know the story front to back. Alas,, the middle often gets only sketched in, and then has to be filled in when I come to writing it. Still only when I know the story do I move on to phase two, putting it into words.
The story I’ve dream up will have scenes with dialog (that no doubt changes as I write it) but is mostly without words, and so when I start putting it into words, I will often make minor changes or additions as I write. It evolves further as I write it, but remains the story I imagined, and set out to tell. I can’t imagine writing a story without knowing where it ends. Part of the fun for me is working towards that ending. Strange how that works with different writers and different approaches.
The city I live in now is big enough to have several writers’ groups. I’ve been tempted to see what they’re about. But on the other hand, I feel I know what works for me, and I’m far from sure I have anything to learn or offer. Still, it might be fun to talk writing and publishing. It’s winter here, and I stay indoors. Maybe in the spring.
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I typically do a lot of mental processing before I start to write, just rolling the idea about for a bit and pondering how to get it started. That mental process is just as much a part of writing as the writing itself. But my mental imaginings are nowhere near as lengthy or detailed as yours are.
As for writing groups, I enjoy the opportunity to talk about writing with other writers, but I don’t get much more than that out of the groups.
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That’s pretty much how I approach writing a novel or story. I need to have at least an idea of how it will end, so I know where I’m going.
When I read “how to write” articles, I often recognize that I’m not likely to think about the advice while in the act of writing a first draft. Maybe while rewriting and editing. I learned how to write by reading works of fiction, not books about how to write such things.
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That’s how I “learned” to write as well. For me, it’s all just instinct. I have only the sketchiest knowledge of English gramma, but my attitude is that just as I don’t need to know how to dismantle and reassemble a car to be able to drive one, so too with English. Just as long as I’m not writing formal or academic English, I can use the language I know.
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This is wonderful. I hated English as taught in public schools when I was growing up. So, I did everything I could to avoid actually learning anything from it. Rules of grammar? Whatever.
This is why I firmly believe that the most important thing a writer can do is to read books. In the almost 55 years I’ve been a reader, I’ve read thousands of books and short stories. Somewhere along the way, something happened in the course of reading all that stuff, and, like you, it’s just instincts built upon all that reading.
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I bought a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style for those times when I fret over some detail enough to want an authoritative answer. But even though I put sentences together competently most of the time, I am ignorant of grammatical terminology.
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People I know who aren’t writers think I’m an expert on words and grammar and the literary masters and so much more and … I’m not. I’m the furthest thing from all of that.
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We’re like musicians who play stuff by ear, rather than learning how to read music.
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Concept with a kicker
Theme with a heart
Conflict with high stakes
Protagonist with a goal
The 4 pillars of a good novel: C.S. Lakin
I firmly believe that even in pantsing, those four concepts needs to have been visualized in order for a story to have legs, both for the reader and for the writer to see the story through to the end.
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I don’t disagree with that.
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I love these passive-aggressive responses. I’ve been using them myself.
“Well, you’re not ugly.”
“I can’t call you stupid.”
“Awkward isn’t quite the word for you.”
“You’re not wrong.”
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That’s the goal. How it’s achieved varies a lot from one writer to another.
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These days, I’m coming to believe that the less I think, the better I write. 😀
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That is a very valid point and one that causes me problems as well.
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