"What’s your process like?"
Me:
So everyone's different, and I am autistic. I have an extensive memory for details, quick and sometimes instinctive understanding of many fiction principles, and a lot of visual thinking. (I have my shortcomings too, especially over-thinking and over-explaining instead of showing.) But I think at least some of what I do can work for you.
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Discipline is better than motivation. Motivation ends, discipline stays. Eventually, hopefully like me, you'll get to a point where you feel wrong if you didn't write every day (or 5 days a week in my case). This hugely helps keep you motivated
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I am a one-trick pony with it; but I always started with a theme, a feeling, something important I want to share and say. For me it was a terrible childhood, my desire for healing and family, my idealism towards wanting a greater world, and how we all need to become better and happier people to achieve it. I wanted to capture that idea and feeling since I was like six. While for my novel the lesson may be larger than life, every fiction should have a point to make, even if that point is "things in this book are awesome; here, have a good time because you deserve it". Your point should be memorable even if small.
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Once you have a theme, start coming up with characters and scenes that support that theme. Write down the things that look or feel awesome in your head, the things that you always wanted to share and show, and come up with your best scenes first. Try to build a story around them. If you have important messages to say, build your plot around them. Have the characters' stakes revolve around those scenes. Once again this is just my method; but I don't think you can go wrong writing heart first.
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For me, I found it easiest to quickly just outline scenes and jot down what you want to happen, what you want said. Finish all the basic sentences, events, and ideas for that scene, move to the next scene. Once you have all the chapters, this will be your first "outline"— even if you end up doing a little (or more) prose in that outline, like I did. Once you have that full story (which probably won't be good yet!) you can start figuring out where it needs fixing.
This is my first novel, and I'm technically still doing the second draft. But I learn very fast and retain a ton of helpful information; so I mostly know what my next phases and fixes are, all the way through my first and later drafts. I made a little changelog of each thing I want to focus on in future versions, all numbered in preparation, as if this was a piece of software.
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Once I'm done with the versions that I call "outlines", I will finally start drafting in full prose, allowing me to focus on the flow and beauty and clarity of my words, since the story itself will already be figured out and awesome.
One way I think of the whole process of noveling is this, modified from game development advice:
- Make it function
- Optimize
- Make it pretty (write your prose draft)
- Optimize again
There's a lot of other advice I can give, but I wouldn't exactly know where to begin! The most important thing, I think, is to figure out what time of day your brain writes best, and create a routine around it. No novel was ever finished without persistence! <3
Also, I recommend reading https://mythcreants.com/ and getting lost in https://tvtropes.org/. They can really help! Try watching Lindsay Ellis on Nebula, or http://atopthefourthwall.com/. Some of these may not be about novel-writing, but you can learn a lot about good stories through any of these platforms, and all of that helps!