Question- What is your writing process?

I’ve written both prose and comics, and my overall method is to vomit up everything in various outlines and rough drafts, get feedback, rewrite with that feedback, keep writing, scrap the story, start from the ground up and rinse and repeat…. Sounds chaotic and time consuming (it is) but, I got one of my most complete and cohesive stories from this method. I think the key is finding the right person to edit your work. Someone who is a better writer and who will give you honest, constructive feedback.

My process

1. I start by stretching in the morning.
2. I take a hearty breakfast.
3. BLOOD SACRIFICES FOR THE NARRATIVE ELDER GODS.

Well, no. Not precisely.

Now seriously.

1. I have an idea.
2. I ponder said idea for a while. (I colloquially say I'm "chewing it")
3. I research anything I think I'll need to develop the idea.
4. I explore different alternatives from the same initial thought.
5. I see which elements of each idea call to me the most and see if I can fit them together (I personally call this, in my mind, Hegelian Narrative Development, just because I'm a pretencious asshat deep inside who likes being wordy.)
6. Once the idea is set and I have enough research material I begin building around it from the outside to the inside.
7. I go from Macro to Micro in the world-building, reaching the furthest point away from the story and working my way towards the center.
8. Once the world is built I expand my character ideas using elements of the world around them, intertwining them to it, modifying my original ideas if needed.
9. With everything in place I can work on the plot, having a lot of breathing room with a developed world and characters.
10. I write multiple outlines about the story in broad strokes and then I split each "act" apart and then I split them apart again. I used a method called the "5 Columns" which I learned during Film Screenwriting School.
11. Once I feel like the plot is set I do a couple more passes writing it as a single chunk of story and later I split everything into scenes, making a list of scenes.
12. I proceed to make drafts of the actual story and revise them multiple times until I'm satisfied with the story.
13. Profit?

I love to hand write on my iPad using GoodNotes. I can be anywhere and jot down ideas and do a rough draft. I use the ocr in GoodNotes to turn my printing to text. I copy the text and post in msword. All this on my iPad and saved in Dropbox.

Then I format and correct the words that weren’t converted right. Then I run it through Grammarly and then have it edited by my wife. Then make last minute changes and save to post.

I usually have a list of ideas for chapters that I use as a basic outline

Oh mine is dreadful and I scribble, but it somehow usually figures out what I meant LOL
I was so surprised too.

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yes it does convert that mess LOL

It didn't get it all correctly but did most as you can see in this image

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So, I put my fingers on my keyboard, and words come out. Sometimes those words are even in English!

Taking tongue out of cheek for a moment, if I had to describe the quirks of my process, they would be:

1. Outlining. Pretty much every longer work I've ever created started with an outline, and the stories and characters come to life at this stage. If you read Re:Apotheosis, the process Kaguyama describes in chapter 3 is basically what I do. There's a bit of a nudge here and there, but otherwise my process of telling a story doesn't feel quite so much as making something up as discovering it.

2. I use WordPerfect, and I always compose double-spaced in Courier 12 point font. I'm old enough that I've been using WordPerfect since there was an actual competition for the office space between WordPerfect and Word, so to a degree it's a legacy application. That said, it does something no other word processor I've used does, outside of Notepad - using it feels like using a typewriter (so, to start a chapter, I hit the keys to centre the line, type the title, hit return, and the cursor is back on the left and I can just start typing). It's great - all I have to concentrate on is the words, and nothing else. As for the font thing, I can't really explain it. If I try composing in any other font, like Times New Roman or single spaced, it screws me up.

3. I very often will write the prologue and/or first chapter, and then the epilogue, and then I'll go back and write the other chapters in order. Not sure why I do it - it's like my brain needs an end point to work towards.

And here's Re:Apotheosis - if you read it, please do comment! There are a lot of twists and turns coming, and I'd kind of love to see how people are reacting and what they think will happen (and it will be interesting to see if they get it right...).

My cursive just looks like loops and squiggles. I can make out words in yours LOL but it is a mess LOL

The simplest way to explain my writing process would be something like this:

I create a detailed story in my mind: as if I'd be watching a movie or TV series from MC's perspective.
Then I do my best to write down what "I saw", with some changes or additions here and there.

My gay romance, slice-of-life story is an example, if somebody is willing to give it try:

sure! I would love to read yours!

Shared it before buuuuuut:

Does squealing at cute parts crying when somethiing important happens in the book and its sad, or sobbing into my own pillow when I am emotionally durressed at my own deadlines, I created for myself count? No...

Okay.

I mainly write on my phone, but that’s only due to how my current PC is old and starting to show that age with slowing down and stuff. I am able to write with my phone, but I would probably be to do more with a PC or laptop, but they cost money.
I started out with fanfictions and do still write them every so often to help with my writing and with my creativity or with just some fun writing activity to do. I don’t write chapter-based fanfics that much anymore and mostly oneshots as anything can happen in them and they can be episodic in nature and considering I want to focus on my own stories they are easier to do as well.
I listen to music to help me draw my characters or picture scenes that I want to happen in the future of my stories though they’re mostly just ideas. I write notes down a lot as well, so I don’t lose track of any ideas. I have a lot of ideas, so it took me a while to focus on just one, but some of my other ideas have some of my favourite character designs or personality-wise characters that I’ve created that I can’t wait to get to writing it, but I like to focus on one thing or else I’ll be overwhelmed.

Here’s my novel if anyone wants to check it out. Don’t feel like you have to. It’s a supernatural/mystery with elements of crime in it.

@TheLemmaLlama @11keys
I shall join the ranks of my chaotic writing brethren in the writing lands devoid of outlines and plans.

Probably the best example of my writing would come from the first story in my series of shorts 'Letters from the Sleepless'. So here goes a breakdown of my chaos:
1) I start with an idea - not even an important scene I want, it could be just a line of dialogue I want to build a story around. For this particular short, the idea was a desire to contextualize a fear of going to sleep and waking up as someone else
2) After letting it unconsciously ferment in my mind, I sit down and write. Normally I need to do this in one sitting or else it just doesn't work (for longer stuff I can break down the sittings into chapters to make it manageable)
3) Editing and proofreading occur during the writing process, which yes means a lot of on-the-fly rewrites - imagine putting together a large puzzle with only having a hazy memory of what the final image should be. When I get up and close the file it is a 'finished project' in my mind.
4) Last is to bother someone to act as a second pair of eyes, which tends to annoy them since I usually just do a complete rewrite to handle any editorial remarks - going back to the puzzle allegory it'd be like if someone mentioned they thought a piece should be a couple spaces over and my response is 'okeydokey guess we're redoing this puzzle!' (This particular story went through 3 iterations; I'm working on improving this aspect of the process - i swear)

I do want to clarify the last point that it's not an issue of being able to take criticism, it's more a mental thing where since I view the works as finished products unto of themselves, I find it easier to make something 'new' than fix the issues. Like if I made a cake and people complained the cake was too sweet. If my story was the cake, it would be infinitely easier to make a new cake than remove sugar from the already baked dough.

Somehow this process has also gotten me through my research career so far ...

An apt metaphor! I guess for me, I consider the 'hazy memory of what the final image should be' an outline so I wouldn't say I'm in the writing lands devoid of outlines, but it's also not really a plan since getting an idea of the overall image isn't Step 1, and also I keep realizing throughout the process that I misremembered the image; 'was it a tower? ...no it was a castle actually. Yeah, it's definitely better as a castle'

I also tend to iterate arcs of my story (which is probably about the same length as a short story if that's what you write as opposed to serials) many times XD My reason's different from yours though; I don't write things in one sitting and consider it 'finished' once I get up and close the file - my reason for iterating is more like 'oh, I was building a tower, but wait I actually want it to be a castle so I have to redo the foundations of this thing and maybe salvage a few little pieces if I'm lucky'

Consequently; I almost never ask for a second pair of eyes because by the time they've read it and gotten back to me with feedback, I would've already spotted things to change and overhauled a bunch of stuff, rendering their feedback obsolete, which would probably annoy them and be super awkward :'D

I don't think going through a bunch of iterations is something you need to improve on though! People who edit instead of rewrite the whole thing from scratch make far more than 3 edits, so the overall amount of rewriting you do comparatively probably ends up being about the same

Entirely spontaneous weather or not I have the time, trying to put things down coherently, building pictures then working to tie in the other ideas.