I had about 40 minutes to write tonight before I met up with my partner in Victorian squid-dom (a project which has been moved to the new year for a variety of reasons.) I spent most of that reading about the wonders of napkin dispensers. What? I didn’t know how they worked. Manuel was helping his abuela.
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I have sketched out the entire Widow story line in the troll book, and now I’m going back to do Deep Writing. Not that my writing process is unique, but first I sketch, then I comb the scene over and add details, almost overwriting. After that, I do a strong polish, and it’s ready to wait until I do the entire book read through.
If a story is really working, it occasionally comes out mostly write the first time. That isn’t the troll book at all, although there are scenes that have worked like that.
If I’m lucky, the story I’m working on rolls out like a movie. With the troll story, the process is more like making a movie. I “film” out of order, use a master to edit the story together, and then watch for continuity. I think this conceptualization is working well. It’s another reason I decided I’d better learn to become an outliner.
When do you add the detail in? And how do you do it?
Catherine
I try to get to the 90% point in the first draft, which is all but the ruffles and flourishes. Then I do an edit, where I cut the unnecessary words & replace them with the sparkle–replacing a “tell” paragraph with a scene, finding better word combinations, and trying to be witty.