If I think too much about process I can't do it. Can only really do that when I'm teaching--when I've switched sides of the brain and am approaching it analytically. I'm writing intuitively and if I pull back and get analytical, it kills the book.
And yet I outline especially with historicals, because events have to happen in a set order. However an intuitive thing often happens--something I'll add because it works turns out to have happened that way in reality, or else a character appears just when I need her and turns out to be just what she needs to be. (Happened in the mip in fact--thank goodness, too, because I needed to shift to female POV and, well, there she was, right in that abbey seven miles from Stonehenge.)
I tend to write tight--sometimes overly so--and have never had to cut. Always have to add. Scenes come through sharp and clear for the most part, and develop through dialogue, with bits of description--then the rest fits itself in. I have an awful time with exposition and time-setting and such--I mean who cares how many days went by between the last scene and this one? (My editor, of course. Aargh.) In a way it's odd I never got into play- or screenwriting.
aireon's first novel was a revelation to me--a completely different way of approaching the process. I well remember all that undergrowth, and the experience of hacking through it. 8)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-07-12 11:44 am (UTC)And yet I outline especially with historicals, because events have to happen in a set order. However an intuitive thing often happens--something I'll add because it works turns out to have happened that way in reality, or else a character appears just when I need her and turns out to be just what she needs to be. (Happened in the mip in fact--thank goodness, too, because I needed to shift to female POV and, well, there she was, right in that abbey seven miles from Stonehenge.)
I tend to write tight--sometimes overly so--and have never had to cut. Always have to add. Scenes come through sharp and clear for the most part, and develop through dialogue, with bits of description--then the rest fits itself in. I have an awful time with exposition and time-setting and such--I mean who cares how many days went by between the last scene and this one? (My editor, of course. Aargh.) In a way it's odd I never got into play- or screenwriting.