Process Meta: General Writing Process Tips!

[poppyseedheart]

q: hi twig! im getting back into fic writing recently, but its been a bit hard. do you have a routine that helps u write or things that ease the process? thank u !!!


a:

welcome back to fic writing!!

i'm just going to stream of consciousness toss out a bunch of things that i've found helpful over the years and we'll see if any of it seems to fit! (future twig here: it did not fit in the cc so i moved here lol)

in terms of routine: i do have one and i also kinda don't. i keep it flexible because my schedule is and has been super busy, impacted, and variable. i am not the kind of person who can wake up early and block off two hours every day for writing before work, you know? setting up expectations like that sets me up to fail and just feels frustrating and takes the fun out of it. that said, i do tend to write almost every day! which you just saw me do in november lol. i tend to prefer afternoon/evening, and i write almost anywhere—at home a lot, but also in the library, in a coffee shop, at panera, etc. 

i LOVE writing sprints. best thing ever. if you're not familiar, you basically set a timer and write as many words as possible, not worrying about editing or typos or whatever, until the time is up. this for me really helps just get words down, feel out scenes, and make a story happen! i like to run them on discord but there are other websites too like mywriteclub that work well.

turning off wifi while writing is a brute force manuever that works well for me every time i try it! it can also be nice to set up an intentional time and space for writing—block off an hour or a whole luxurious afternoon, go somewhere, light a candle, take a shower, curate mood music... i only find this stuff helpful when i'm doing it to aid the writing process and not avoid it, so that's something to keep in mind, but it can be really nice to commit to enjoying the process whenever you can.

for easing the writing process itself, i have lots of things that depend on what i'm trying to write. if it's a longer story, i've gotten really into planning on notion lately (i made a youtube video about the planning process for emma au here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbjW7iChEr0) and i plan more these days than i ever used to.

if it's short (to me that's under ~6-7k, YMMV), i try to get stuff out either fully in one go or in vignettes that i link together. i don't plot a lot for those aside from trying to think about how i want it to end (not specifically plot, but character growth/relationship development/etc. what is the end state for these characters?)

i've talked about it another cc i think, but i structure most stories by thinking/pre-writing about: the premise, the midpoint, the climax, and the ending. that often leads to other plot points coming up, but i like to think about what a scene needs to accomplish and how the reader should feel reading it (which is often different from what the pov character is feeling, but not always!). i really like a three or four act structure, and i write over the skeleton of a hero's journey a lot (taking liberties of course). i find all of these things make it easier to keep up with a plot and feel like decisions are deliberate and making sense in the context of a story.

you should take all of this with a grain of salt because i got a degree studying english lit in the US, so it's a v western lit perspective, but also because that means a lot of these processes feel kind of automatic for me at this point and i'm not always that good at articulating them.

another helpful thing if you're trying to ease the way is writing a story that's an au of an existing story—not only is it fun, but it gives you a built-in guide around what important things should happen when.

okay last thing because this is getting out of hand. but talking to people about your story is a thing that doesn't work for some people because they don't feel motivated to write it after talking about it. for me it's the opposite. i love yelling about what i'm writing! having the support of friends makes a big difference and having people to bounce ideas off of is a gamechanger when i feel stuck or bored with what i'm doing.

wait one more thing: if you're feeling stuck or bored with what you've written, that's information! it doesn't mean you're a bad writer, it means something in the story probably isn't working. go back to the previous scene. go back another. what still excited you abuot the story and what doesn't? deleting stuff can be demoralizing but it can also save a story you thought was dead in the water. becoming friends with the revision process is fucking hard but so worht it.

okay that's it!! good luck out there!! my cc and dms are always open if you want to talk process!!