Something I've Learned That Does Work For Me

I went to a writers workshop lead by a member of my awesome writers group (livingwriterscollective.blogspot). Tricia Petty, of Cellphane Ministries and Antibellum Productions,  has worked in the movie industry as well as writing novels and mentioned that working with screenplays gave her the idea to break a story down into scenes rather than chapters.
I don't know why this works, but it was a lifesaver for fixing my problem with my first book, where I scrambled the plot and the subplots, and in my second book where I tired to cobble together seperate bits and pieces of the story into a cohesive narrative. By breaking the story up into scenes, I am able to write each scene on an index card and shuffle them around until I had events in the best order. I know this will be a method I use with every book I write.
When established authors answer the common question from beginning writers "How do you write?", most  describe thier own writing process and stress that it is what works for them.  The only way to know if it can be an effective part of your own process is to try it. Different things work for different writers and few authors work exactly the same way. As my friend Karen says (mywritingloft.blogspot) your writing process has to be yours.

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Learning From Mistakes

My friend Karen (mywritingloft.blogspot) has begun a series of blogs on 366 lessons she has learned about writing. In one of them she says that every writer should have a process and in another she explains what her process is.  Lucky for her, she learned her process while writing a screenplay and was able to apply it successfully to her novel.
     I have completed two novels, (not counting ones that are finished-but-not-finished because I never revised them enough to consider them as good as they can be - but have not given up on and plan to continue working on again in the future), and I don't think I have a defined process yet.
     I have learned a few lessons about the way not to do things. On my first novel, I wanted to get the bones of the story down first, so I wrote the whole thing, concentrating on just the main plot. This left me with a 35,000 word (barely a novella) manuscript that was a very simple story.  Then I created a few subplots and set about weaving them into the main plot.
     It was a nightmare. Two thirds of the way through, the 3 or 4 strands of the story were a hopeless snarl. I had to virtually rewrite the whole book, going back to the bare bones and starting again.  The main thing I learned from this was that I am not a good enough writer yet to manage a complex story plot, or even more than a main plot and two uncomplicated subplots. I am in fact now working on revision 5 (or 7) of that book and almost have all the tangles out. Maybe a process would have helped me avoid this.
     What I ended up doing with this first book was adding the subplots into the main plot in a staggered manner so I never had more weave together than I could manage. This worked well in my second book also and I was able to add  the subplots or complications to the main plot at intervals and avoid the mess I made of the first book.
     I followed the generally accepted advice of setting aside each book when I was done with the first draft and going on to the next project. When I'm done with final revisions to book one in a couple of weeks, I will begin the second revision to book two. I'm hoping it will not need a half dozen revisions (and two years) to complete. Then maybe I will learn more about developing my own process.

www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com