Katie Runyon

As I move on to my third book, I’ve begun to work out my own process for writing. It’s nothing special, but it’s how I approach writing. I’m sure many others out there have their own way of doing things, and I’d be happy to hear them, but I figured I’d use this time to tell you mine.

Obviously it all starts with an idea, either written down or just floating about in my brain. Then this idea begins to grow, usually of its own accord, but sometimes with a little prodding. With the wish to turn this idea into a book, I get out paper and pen and write down what I know so far. It may only be a few paragraphs or even a few sentences, but it is a beginning. In my notebook for Legendary Race, the first page consists of only two short paragraphs of notes. This is followed by a quick (paragraph) scene summary that I had in my head.

Next I move deeper into the story, fleshing it out. Since I already had an idea for something I thought of as only “The Darkness”, I wanted to get into that first. What is the darkness? Where did it come from? What can it do? Those are some of the questions I posed to myself while jotting down a page worth of notes about anything that popped into my head concerning that topic. Then it was on to the Legendary Race, where I jotted down another page of notes.

So after I wrote down some of the basic ideas for two of the main parts of my book, I moved on to my questions page. I think I’ve done this for all three books now and I find it pretty helpful. I jot down some questions that still need to be answered, even if they are as simple as: “What is so and so’s name?” These questions allow me to visually see which things I still don’t know and allow me to think about them all separately in order to concentrate on one at a time.

After the questions stage, I move on to more notes in order to flesh out more details about the story from what I have just figured out. This can also mean doing a lot of event summaries/ideas, which seem to be a very common thing for me now.

And this leads me closer to the actual writing. After I’ve jotted down a general summary for the story, I move on to the final stage before writing. This is the scene summary stage and happens throughout the whole book. Usually before I write a scene, to help work out the details beforehand, I write a scene summary detailing the basics of what I see happening in the scene. Depending on the scene, it can be anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages. But I’ve found, especially when I’m stuck, this helps me to push forward and work out the obstacles I might find when approaching a scene. If I’m not sure what is going to happen next, which is a frequent occurrence, I just sit down with paper and pen and write what I know and soon things begin to work themselves out. But if I find myself in a really hard place, trying to decide what action to take, I write down the choices and the impact they may have or pose questions to myself. This usually gets things rolling and sometimes once I write it down, I know what I’m going to do right away. Occasionally, even drawing out a location to see possible movements when in a fight scene, etc. I guess I’m a very visual person and writing it down on paper seems to help.

So pretty much my process is this: main ideas/brief notes, begin to flesh out story/characters, pose questions that still need to be answered, brief story events, story summary, begin writing (with event summary before each scene).

Of course, since this was a continuation of a story about a world I already know a lot about, my job is made a little easier. But once I move on to a new book, a new world, there will be a lot more in the beginning notes and in fleshing out story, characters, and setting.

Now if only I could work on keeping everything a bit more organized, things might go a little smoother.