How do you write?

SKILORD · January 30, 2003, 00:25

Do you write your stories chapter by chapter, directly written on the Forums, making it up as you go along, do you save, revise and perfect it before allowing it out?

Please share, personally i'm more of a spur of the moment guy.

vovan · January 30, 2003, 00:33

Heh, well, not ad nauseum... But I do revise. The way I wrote my latest story, before the long break was like this:

I wrote the first three chapters. Then, I would reread a chapter, revise it, and post. After that, the same day, I wouold write the next chapter. Then, two days later, I would read / revise / post the chapter after the one I had posted before, and write a new one.

I know, that's a little confusing, but with real numbers it would go like this:

* Write chapter 1
* Write chapter 2
* Write chapter 3
* Read / revise / post chapter 1 + write chapter 4
* Read / revise / post chapter 2 + write chapter 5

That was good for two reasons:
1. I was able to reread my chapters before posting, and improve them.
2. If at some point I was lacking inspiration, I could just post one of the chapters, and not write the next one.

Of course, as the finals started last semester, I was constantly lacking inspiration, so, I posted out the reserve, and ... that was it. Yeah, there was a month-long delay then. But any ways, that's how I like to write.

Easthaven I · January 30, 2003, 00:35

Same here. Every post I make was just created at that time. I totally make it up as I go. So I couldn't tell you the ending even if I wanted to.

vovan · January 30, 2003, 00:43

Oh, and one more positive side of my approach - if the forums decides it does not like me, and chews up my post, I still have a copy on my hard drive.

Nothing can be as insipiration-draining as typing up a post and then loosing it to some stupid connection glitch or something.

But also, I think I know why I write the way I do. It is not only because I like to revise, but also due to the fact that I cannot write a lot at any given time. If I sit down with the specific goal of writing something, I usually end up spending ten-fifteen minutes staring at the blank screen and giving up. The way I usually come up with things is totally random. Sometimes, I get this great idea while I am eating. So, I would just write the outline down on a napkin, and then when I am back at my room, type it up, and elaborate. Very often I come up with stuff during english and history lectures (because they are boring as hell). And sometimes while taking a shower. Also, very often I would come up with stuff when I am already lying in the bed, with lights off, but not asleep yet. That is my ultimate inspiration time. Sometimes I even get up again to wrte down particularly cool ideas.

As you can see, with such an erratic supply of inspiration, I just cannot make stuff up as I go. In a way, I am also a "spur of the moment guy," only I can't force that moment on myself at will.

gooberboob · January 30, 2003, 00:56

I totally have the same thing, the shower is where my cool ideas come out. Probably something like: I look at all the filth that was on my body and think, "That'd be a cool story." As for sleep, You sleep??

MindsBigger · January 30, 2003, 01:27

i usually have an idea of a story...maybe a sentance fragment or two written on a scrap of paper....and i just sit down and go from there....meaning while im all over the net doing research on everything from the common spellngs to what the **** an egyptian war chariot looks like -thanks The_Evangelion_Freak- ...and hopefully after an hour or two....i end up somewhere...

...or an i always have to be listening to music....everything from Miles to Massive Attack....St Germain to High Contrast....

and lastly my girlfriends proofreads and corrects my sloppy semblance of a story -thanks Jenny!-

oh yeah....and i use Notepad.....anything else would be uncivilized....

SKILORD · January 30, 2003, 01:31

Quote:

Nothing can be as insipiration-draining as typing up a post and then loosing it to some stupid connection glitch or something.

I copy mine before posting them so i can paste it if I have trouble.

Quote:

Very often I come up with stuff during english and history lectures (because they are boring as hell).

Math Lectures for me.

Your blankness problem very rarely strikes me, i remember you and Chrisus commenting on how my mind never really turns off, while I couldn't bring myself to stop posting on the Manifest Destiny thread, ths is rather true, My nly duifficulty is keeping my ideas in line, and keeping them from running amok and getting lost and replaced.

ChrisiusMaximus · January 30, 2003, 03:31

I find I tend to have my most inspirational moments whilst seated on the old white telephone, thats john or can to you American friends out there.

Have you ever tried frantically scribbling down your ideas whilst straining, on 2 ply tissue paper. Hey its not easy!!

Centauri18 · January 30, 2003, 06:41

I get ideas while watching the History Channel. Or reading alternate history. I had the Mexican War take place much earlier, and such, but most of it is based on actual historical concepts.

Bugs ****ing Bunny · January 30, 2003, 15:46

They sit in my head for weeks, and then I suddenly get a bit of free time and it just pours out.

I never re-write. I've been mentally editing it for ages, after all. In fact I've got a corker of a story in my noggin right now, but my daughter needs entertaining.

chairmanmeow · January 30, 2003, 16:34

I've been writing it one chapter at a time, keeping a copy on my computer, but posting a chapter as soon as I'm done it, because if I didn't, I'd end up finding so many things wrong with it that I would never post it.

TheGuitarist · January 30, 2003, 18:12

How do I write? Really slowly.

But seriously, I use Word. Although I have to redo the formatting when I actually post.

Like you, vovan, my ultimate inspiration time is lying in bed with the lights off. I normally plan out a chapter at a time in my head, but then when I actually sit down to write it, it all comes out at once.

gooberboob · January 30, 2003, 18:59

Chrisius, here we call it the shi tter, not can, or john, some of my friends call it the loo because they say it's British, I call them ****ers and they look at me quizzically. They wish they were British instead of the kids of rich suburban wisconsinites

Jeremy 2.0 · January 30, 2003, 19:05

How do I write? In Word, for starters. Each new story idea gets its own document and I work on them as the idea hits me. I try to stick to one story at a time but I've only recently been able to focus like that.

I can't post stories one chapter at a time. Not once has a story I've started not gone through a wringer of editing, formatting and overhauling. The next story I hope to post here is finished in my head. But the devil's in the details, as they say.

As an example, my current effort started out as a straightforward narrative. Then I got the bright idea to tell it in present tense. Then I went back to past tense, and then last night, as I was scribbling notes on a cocktail napkin in a piano bar, the thought struck me that first-person perspective from the opposite end of the conflict might be the way to go. Of course this would mean starting over completely. I still don't know yet which way to go.

Perhaps this sheds some light one my one-story-per-four months average.

vovan · January 30, 2003, 19:05

Douple post.

vovan · January 30, 2003, 19:05

Triple post, it seems...

vovan · January 30, 2003, 19:05

Well, I am not quite sure we need to go into this discussion, but...

Here we call them porcelain gods, and they receive lots of worshipping after an exciting friday night.

ChrisiusMaximus · January 30, 2003, 20:44

Goober Im glad you call them shi tters, so do we over here but you are correct in that the wealthier classes use the term Loo. It would be interesting to compile a list of peoples favourite pet names for their sanitary ware.

Jeremy 2.0 my advice, go take a dump. Honestly there's nothing quite like it for getting a real load off your mind, trust me if you spend more time in the laboratory youre story production rate will match SKILORD'S.

Guitarist thats my point exactly,
Quote " but then when I actually sit down to write it, it all comes out at once"
Yes the inspiration can certainly flow especially the day after a heavy drinking session and a curry.

vovan thats a new one on me, porcelain gods, but who gives a s**t.

cbraund · January 30, 2003, 21:25

Hmmm...

I rarely use Word - only if I can't get to the net will I use Word. I prefer to just do each post as it comes, and copy it just incase the forum crashes (also I type it here then copy and paste it to CFC usually lol, CFC is a lot more unstable).

Any revisions I make while I'm typing - the story usually rushes out of me once I'm at a keyboard, and I edit it as it comes out, and sometimes edit what I've already typed if needed (ever hate that first paragraph, or realise something doesn't fit, then rush back and delete entire paragraphs to make them fit better? It's damned annoying, isn't it lol?).

Finally, as for inspiration, it's usually while listening to music that I get ideas, or a great film - ie; a trailer for Gangs of New York inspired the beginning to Dulce Et Decorum Est, and and Gladiator inspired the first ever Dangerous Games if I remember correctly. Also, I do also get ideas when watching history programmes, like Centauri18, and also from reading some books - the laser-guided missile through the bedroom window in Their Finest Hour(I think it was that anyway lol, might have been The Hunting Season) was an idea taken from Executive Order by Tom Clancy, where the bad guy gets a missile right at his house on live TV lol.

Basically, I just get ideas pop into my head. Some I reject, some I add into stories as sub-plots or as part of the main plot, and quite a few I turn into stories. Most ideas are thought through before they reach the keyboard, and are changed slightly in my mind and merged with others, until finally I get to type it, and even then the plot changes as I go along - in Illusions of Victory I was considering having Alexander and Spartacus both die in the last battle, but at the last moment I decided it would be better for Alexander to die at the hands of a civilian who had been hurt by his evil ways.

Basically, I'm a very random person lol

Chris

SKILORD · January 30, 2003, 23:37

Since everyone else hs extensevly divulged their writing process I might as well place mine in more detail than i have on previous posts.

Sometimes I am inspired, Crusader's Legacy is an example. I was reading Cradle of Thorns, the chapter about the discovery of Monotheism, when I began to wonder about thaat particular tech, what if, It had been a prophecy, actually at first I thought a theory along scientific lines, but i have settled with prophecy. This story leapt fully formed into my mind.

Manifest Destiny was another beast entirely. I wanted to advertise my MOD (I'm shameless about this) and so I decided to write a story set in it. The night before, while I pondered it the opening line about Forest marring the tundra came to me and I built the plot as I went, this is the way I usually do stories, in the past I have written about games even as i was finishing the games.

DarkCloud · January 30, 2003, 23:41

Somewhere in between.
I wrote Civ III Poem on the spur of the moment... but revised my other poems... and as for my stories... I wrote them; posted them; then went back and edited them as I wrote the later bits. (Such as The Charioteer's Campaigns)

I always use word for my longer pieces... especially because of its good search feature... i just like using its find rather than notepads for some strange reason... and the autowrap features serve well.

gooberboob · January 30, 2003, 23:42

LOL I just had an installment to Yuute disappear because of A O HELL

SKILORD · January 30, 2003, 23:50

goob: copy it to clipboard before you post.

chairmanmeow · January 31, 2003, 18:32

I forgot to mention in my above post: I use a text editor that I made with VB. No Word for me...