Yesterday, I had a really fun conversation during my Writers Circle office hour. We talked about process and story development. I thought I’d share some thoughts from that conversation with you today.
This writer, I’ll call her Anne, has been writing her whole life, but is now tackling her first novel. She is working through my Story Works Guide to Writing Character craft book and showed me her notebook full of the exercises I offer. Can I say: it was so much fun to see my work being used and helping her with her character development!
Anne had the idea that she had to do all of her research and development before putting pen to paper to draft her novel. This is a fairly common idea, I think, since so many writers talk about the years of research they do before they begin writing—famous example, James Michener. And don’t we all want a tidy process we can hang our hats on? A Step A, Step B, Step C, Book kind of thing? I have always found creativity to be a beautifully untidy thing, which may sound funny coming from the woman who wrote the book with all those exercises Anne was dutifully completing. You see, creative writing is both and more than that: it is step A, step B, and it is disorganized shoe boxes full of scribbled-on index cards, and it is brilliant ideas that come in the shower and flee before you can get your damp hand on a pencil. I love that about novel writing, and I encourage all writers to embrace every facet of creativity that shines for you, whether it appeals to your tightly-coifed-librarian side or your pajama’d-ex-pat-typing-on-a-balcony-in-Morocco side.
I invited Anne to start a new notebook, one that she writes parallel to her notebook full of exercises. We can call them the Librarian’s Notebook and the Ex-pat’s Notebook. The Librarian’s will continue its duty as a container for the learning and practice of her novel’s development. Here, Anne will do the exercises in my books and whatever “work” she decides will help her craft the foundation and structure of her story. The Ex-pat’s will be gloriously messy, a repository of lightning bolts and coffee rings. Here, Anne will “play,” capturing the inspirations that come to her while she does the diligent, studious work of preparing to write her novel.
You see, the Librarian likes the stacks with their orderly rows of shelves, everything alphabetized and Dewy-decimal’d. Her notebook, because Anne is reading my book and working through it in order, can be like that: chapter 1, exercises and reflections. Chapter 2, exercises and reflections, Chapter 3, building on the last two. The thing is, Anne or any of us could do all the work of research and development, creating lovely artifacts. But those artifacts will just sit on the shelf unless we crack the Ex-pat’s notebook. In the Ex-pat’s Notebook, Anne can jot down thoughts, ideas, bits of scene, snatches of dialogue, anything and everything that emerges over her weeks or months or years of preparing.
My own process is circular. As I described to Anne, I have a notebook for every project I’m working on. I throw everything into it without regard for order. If I am taking notes from my research reading, some bit of information might spark an idea for the story. I capture that idea right there on the page. If that idea leads me to a flash of scene or snippet of dialogue, I jot it down. If the scene starts to roll, I freewrite it. I’m capturing information and ideas alongside each other as they come to me, whether from a research book or my imagination. None of what goes into the notebook has to make it into the novel. I’m not drafting my book yet, but I am writing.
This messy play of the Ex-pat feeds into the tidy work of the Librarian and vice versa. Because of that spark of an idea, I might have a new slant when I go back into the exercises. For example, one of the questions I ask on my character development questionnaire (I hate those things, too, so I did my best to make this one different) is “What would your character’s ex say about him or her right after they break up?” Selfish? Workaholic? Messy? Um, okay. But let’s say my character is a cop and while I’m researching the work and lives of police in America, I learn that not only do XX% of cop marriages end in divorce, but XX% of cops are killed in the line of duty. That fact piques my curiosity. I jot it down in my Ex-pat Notebook, then go back to my Librarian Notebook. Now, I start thinking about a breakup, why she would end the relationship, and what he would say about her. I have that bit of info in my brain. I think, he’s getting serious, but last year, right before they met, she saw her mentor on the force get killed and witnessed the grief of his wife and young children, and it wrecked her. She’s scared that if she lets herself build a future with the man she’s falling in love with, they will have children and then what? Does she end the career she loves? At this point, I exclaim something like, “Backstory. Score!” Open the Ex-pat Notebook and capture that idea. See how that prompt, what would her ex say about her, just got real? Now, I have a much more interesting answer to the prompt, which I write in the Librarian’s notebook. The adjectives I find as I figure out how to answer that prompt spark something in my imagination. I grab the Ex-pat Notebook again and scribble it out, capturing some of the dialogue that might make it into the actual scene when she tries to break it off.
Want to ask me questions like Anne?
If that seems like a lot of shuffling, you can do it all in one combined notebook. The point is that our research and development isn’t meant to exist in a vacuum from our creative process, even if they are kept in separate places. The whole process is circular, one notebook, or side of the brain, feeding the other.
After I described how I use my Librarian’s work and Ex-pat’s play simultaneously while gearing up to draft, Anne asked about keeping track of it all and actually using it when it comes time to write the manuscript. Great question. I have three options for you.
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