August 17th, 2007
On one of the LJ communities to which I belong, this topic came up, and while I pondered my answer, I thought it would be worth posting what I came up with here on my Complete Fabrications site.
I don’t have a single way of getting to the story I will eventually write. With SanClare Black, I started with the character. The world and the story grew up around him as I tried to find the right milieu for the person he was–with specific abilities and a defined personality–and that took some work to figure out. Generally, I find Lois McMaster Bujold’s story-starter, “What’s the worst thing I could do to this character?” works well for me.
With La Cause Sorciériste, it’s been the opposite: I had the story idea and then needed to figure out who could be the center of this story. This took several attempts and then Sophie-Katrine grabbed centerstage, and the story is off and running.
I’ve heard many other writers talk about how they talk to their characters and vice versa. Not my style at all. My characters never talk to me, and I don’t talk to them. What I do is what I call “method writing,” because I will get into the characters’ heads to work out scenes and will act out conversations (taking all the roles myself, naturally) to get the dialogue or actions correct.
I don’t do much hopping around in the story (though in the editing phase, things sometimes move around). I’m pretty set on writing from start to finish in linear fashion, though I will occasionally write out a future scene if it’s really strong in my mind, and I don’t want to lose it.
I am very visual, and I always know what things look like, but, as one of my First Readers points out, I somtimes forget to mention it to anyone while I’m focusing on capturing the emotions and the feel of the characters’ interactions. Later rounds of edits often involve putting in more descriptions and visual cues.