The Write Process for You
By Melinda Rucker Haynes

©2005 All Rights Reserved
November 2005 Issue of Eastside RWA Passionate Papers Newsletter

Like any writer I want to know how other writers and creatives do what they do and I want to know why they choose a particular process. I wonder how they get in creative flow and effectively communicate their vision in words or form that entertains and inspires. As a writer, how can I synthesize or adapt some part of another's creative process to help me write more fluently from creative flow. As a creativity coach, how can I use what I've learned to inspire and help others improve their own process?

Your Creative Process Is Reflective of You

Our creative writing processes, how we weave the elements of fiction into a story, can reflect how we view and relate to our world as well as our training, experience, education and organizational preferences. I'm a teacher, a former grant and textbook writer. Establishing a scope and sequence of a writing project is still an important part of my creative process, even with my fiction. After my primary story idea is peopled with characters and I've given the story a title, I like to know where the story could goÑthat's the scope. The sequence would be what happens to whom and when all the way to The End. This initial creating may start with notes and I usually work through the elements of fiction for a particular story on my Story Compass©, which gives me a flexible road map that allows for interesting detours as the plot, subplots, characters and theme emerge in the writing. But that is my process and it's always developing. Other writers have great processes, too, that they're kind enough to share.

Multi-published romance author and actor, Diane Pershing presented a fascinating Layering the Scene workshop at Eastside RWA's October chapter meeting. Her process is an eleven step system beginning with The Core of what the scene is about or what information she as the author wants to impart by the scene's end. Other writers might call that establishing the scene's goal. Diane then works on dialogue by getting the characters talking and she makes notes about what the characters are feeling. She works next on subtext or the narrative emotion and proceeds to blocking the scene, moving the characters within the scene and on which line of dialogue. Diane understands Point of View as "each character is a camera and if the camera shifts in the scene, then make sure each is recording only what its lens can see." The remaining steps of Diane's process involve tweaking language, adding or expanding metaphors, adjectives and reworking mechanics. The basis of Diane's scene layering process seemed to be in her background as a working actor.

Other Creative Writing Processes

Lindy McLaine is an author and actor/director who says, "there are as many ways of working as an actor as there are of writing for a writer." Lindy feels that she has the same struggles as an actor and director that she has as a writer. After hearing Diane Pershing's presentation, Lindy reported that she hadn't thought of working with dialogue first instead of beginning with the narrative details and intends to try that. She related to Diane's scene blocking process, and now from that perspective, believes she may use too much physical direction in her fiction writing, such as "she turned" because, "Onstage, using one piece of business effectively can be better than a whole bunch of different things."

Another writer, Connie Coleman, is a professional photographer whose writing process mirrors her visual composition method that she uses in her photography. Like scanning a landscape for a possible photo, Connie experiments with the composition of a story by jotting down a couple of paragraphs for each chapter to workout flow. She writes random scenes that reflect her emotional state at the time of creating. She sees her story in her mind like a movie or slide show that she replays and can refocus on revealing details.

A writer with a scientific background such as Lisa Wanttaja (writing as Lisa McAlister) has a different, perhaps more systematic creative writing process. The former chemist outlines for a rough overall telling of the story. By chapter two or three and the point where she feels she needs a roadmap, Lisa may restructure with a descriptive line per scene. At the start of each writing day, she goes back through the last chapter or scene she's written to "check her data" and restructure if necessary. Though she presently layers as she goes, after hearing Pershing's presentation, Lisa believes she might give the separate steps of scene blocking and working with subtext a try.

Darcy Carson worked for Boeing for many years where she was expected to organize and execute on endless deadlines. She's task-oriented and linearly directed toward desired outcome and carries that attitude into her creative writing. Darcy starts with a premise and breaks the story idea down into chapters, writing a word or two about each possible scene. After hearing Diane Pershing's process, Darcy says she's tempted to try re-reading the story or scene, focusing on the visual and asking herself if she's seeing and writing everything that needs to be in the scene.

The Write Creative Process for You

As you learn about and perhaps experiment with other writers' processes, you will discover that there is no one-size-fits-all creative process. Like characters that develop throughout a great story, so do our individual creative processes that are in a state of becoming just as we are. As we learn, experiment and change, so does the way we do what we do. The one essential this creative becoming demands of you the writer is to have the desire to communicate/share your unique perspective, your story authentically and fluently. The only way to do that is through constantly developing and refining your creative process so that you're creating from flow. And that is the write process for you.