Three dollars and some change

For the Ask Me Anything December meme - Day #8a

How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines? (src)

My writing style can best be described as “organic”. Before I start writing, I usually have a pretty good understanding of what I’d like to explore in the story, what the character’s journey will be, and what the end will look like. I have a very broad outline in my head, but does any of that ever get written down? No. Mostly because I find that the big details stay with me, and the smaller ones shift and move as I’m writing anyway, so I aim to be more fluid with my story direction.

What that ends up looking like in longer stories is that pieces are imagined in broad strokes. For example, the chapter of Hands of Clay I’m currently writing was always in my head as “[Character] goes to the hospital.” I knew how the beginning of the chapter should go, but that was all, and I am now 10,447 words deep and it’s all coming together in its own way.

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For the Ask Me Anything December meme - Day #8b

Optimally, how many times does your work go through the revising process? (src)

What revising process I tend to re-read and revise as I go. When it gets to the actual writing part, I’ve usually spent a lot of time on the planning part, so what gets written I know will fit into the broader story arc.

I think a lot of my approach to revising comes from my days working for a newspaper, where any story revisions were one and done and you were moving on to the next thing – that meant you had to write the story the right way the first time.