Part of the Process

So today I thought I would give you a little insight as to how my writing gets made.

Some writers have pretty hard and fast methods of how they put a piece together. They find a formula that works for them and just repeat whenever they need to. I wish that was me. I'm much more random.

So, if I'm writing a short story the germ of an idea can happen a number of ways. Sometimes it's an image. Maybe I'll see a photograph or a scene from a movie that gives me an idea. Sometimes it'll be a line from a book. I'll see the whole shape of a story play out. I often see plots in terms of movies. That's how I write too. If I'm constructing a scene, I normally see it like a movie in my head. I watch my characters talk, see where they're set, and just write it down as best as I can.

Once I have that initial thought, it can manifest a couple of ways. It could be that I spot the whole story in that first thought. I might see the whole narrative and that just needs to be filled out with characters and setting etc. This is fairly straight-forward to achieve, it's just a matter of making the story strong enough to care about. Other times, it's just a simple notion that needs to have a story built around it. This conceptual method is trickier as it normally means I have this one little idea I want to achieve, and then I have to construct a plot, setting and characters from scratch to match. This is more problematic as it often turns out awkward and like the concept is separate from the story. The story can feel weaker compared to the denouement. Then again, if I can achieve the seamless joining of the two that it needs to have, then this method can yield great results. That nugget of an idea can bring a piece to life. It can give it magic.

If I'm writing a much longer piece of writing, then that needs a lot more planning. I might still get the initial idea the same way as a shorter piece, but there's no way you can sustain a whole long piece of writing with just that. Ideally, I then have to investigate all the characters, figure out their motivations and hopefully bring them to life in dialogue etc. Longer pieces also benefit from having sub-plots. It's pretty boring to read a long piece of writing if it's just one straight storyline with no deviation. That's where sub-plots come in. Think Pulp Fiction or something like that. It's pretty tricky to weave varying strands together, so lots of planning and tracking needs to be done. It's so easy to miss things with sub-plots. Greater writers than me have been caught out with conflicting sub-plots.

Poetry varies quite a lot. I split my poems up quite a lot between the visceral image-based ones and the more conceptual ideas. With poetry it's often just a turn of phrase that inspires me. Maybe taking an old saying or something and subverting it, and riffing on that. The senses often play a part in poems. Conjuring up a smell or a sound or working off colours works quite well. Capturing the reader is key in poetry, it's a lot about drawing them in. I normally try to achieve this through the rhythm or the cadence of the writing. Short, sharp lines tend to speed up reading, whereas, long, languid more flowery language slows a piece down a lot. With poetry, every word has so much more importance, so therefore it is wise to be economical and have your words really have the best impact. Any wrong choice of word can really jar with a reader and break the spell of a poem.

All in all, there's many techniques I use. Some I've learnt, but mostly I work from instinct. I'm generally led by the writing. Normally if you try to force a piece into a particular shape, it doesn't quite work. It feels clunky and awkward. A reader sniffs these out pretty quickly. Often, I'll start a piece of writing with an idea of where it will go, but if you let a character or a plot line run off on it's own, it will take you to far

more interesting places.

Anyway, I'm not giving you all my secrets today, or you'd all be at it.

Thanks for reading.

M.