How do you go about writing a story? Do you have a technique for writing a short story or a book that works for you?
Do you have a plot and characters in mind when you start to write? Or does the plot develop as you write and do the characters emerge over time?
Do you know timelines and ages, etc. before you start writing or do you figure these things out as you proceed?
Do you outline the book and then write it? Or do you just start writing and watch the story take shape?
Do you think about your plot and characters a lot when you are away from the computer? Does this help or hinder your progress with your story?
When you recognize that something in your story isn’t ringing true, do you fix it then or wait until you’ve finished fleshing out a scene.
Do you stop to research small questions while writing or do you make notes to conduct this research later.
How important is the flow of the story? In other words, is it important that you keep writing and worry about questions and problems later?
How do you keep characters and the progress of the storyline organized? Do you have pages of notes, note cards, a wall chart?
A whole lot of fiction writers would like to know. Would love to have you share.
Now that I work for an online publishing platform, Kbuuk (http://kbuuk.com), I have found that publishing is the easy part! Because I’m a marketing person, that part seems to be an easy part, but it’s difficult to market a product that doesn’t exist yet, so my biggest challenge remains the writing.
As to some of the questions in the post, I’m testing Scrivener. It’s supposed to keep you organized, but since it requires some time up front to dedicating to learning the software, I find myself reverting to good ol’ Word most of the time, even thought I know it’s going to be a beast to get it all organized in the end.
Happy Writing!