A question posed last night by a Facebook friend: So where do you start, outside characters on a page? The eternal question, I know …
This was my answer:
1. A vague idea, generally built around a character or a couple of characters.
2. A clear idea of how it starts.
3. A clear idea of how it ends (true story: In both cases, I’ve known what the last line of the book was going to be when I sat down to write).
Now, that last part is a bit unusual, from what I gather. Stephen King, for instance, believes that a writer should never know what the story is going to be and instead should sit down and let the story go wherever it wants. I have no standing to argue with Stephen King. He is the man. But twice now, I have known what the ending will be.
However, in both cases, my vague idea has undergone a pretty serious transformation in the course of setting down 80,000-plus words. With the most recent one, in fact, the biggest twist to the story occurred to me halfway through, prompting me to rewrite the beginning and a good deal of the middle. Even the ending was different from what I expected when I started, but the last line — which in many ways compelled me to keep thinking about the idea and finally commit to setting it down — remained.
Finally, I’ll say this: Some writers disdain outlining. Some writers spend as much time on the outline as on the novel. I made countless attempts at writing novels and never succeeded until I used an outline. Mine are crude, just a few scattered thoughts to keep me on the path, and as I indicated above, not rigorous enough to keep me from changing my mind as I go. I simply don’t know how I could manage to keep the pace and story arc moving at the right speed without one.
So, really, that ends up being the answer, both to the question you asked and to the larger question of how does one finish: any way you can.
Craig Lancaster | A Mind Adrift in the West 
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August 25, 2009 at 7:08 am
kristentsetsi
Stephen King, for instance, believes that a writer should never know what the story is going to be and instead should sit down and let the story go wherever it wants.
That’s because that’s how HE writes. It works for him. (I don’t care who the writer is – I find it insufferably insufferable when one writer claims to know the one true and only way a “writer” should write.)
To answer the question you pose in your blog, for me it depends on the story I’m telling. Whether long (novel) or short (short story), the method changes. With Homefront, I didn’t create an outline but I did have something like a character timeline, with notes on their goals, their obstacles, the conflicts in the relationships they had with one another, etc.
The Year of Dan Palace has no such planning. I think I discovered the ending yesterday, at this mid-point in writing the novel, but I’m not sure. And I made a few plans to get me there, but this one is far more scattered than the last.
As to how it starts, mine start much in the same way yours do – either around a general idea, or with a very specific story in mind, or with a clear character who has to do…something.
August 25, 2009 at 7:45 am
Advice for People Who Take Writing Advice « From a little office in a little house
[…] on Craig Lancaster’s always-interesting blog. In the entry currently posted, titled “How Do You Do It?”, Lancaster answers that question posed to him by a Facebook friend regarding the way he […]
August 25, 2009 at 10:17 am
Kent Anderson
Great question, great answer. Every time I’ve tried to write a novel when I didn’t have a burning drive to get the character into a final situation, I was stymied, and the manuscript died.
So, to start, I find the only thing that works for me is to have a vague visual sense of the final scene. I can’t see specifics, it’s a little dreamlike, but I know who is there and generally what’s going to happen.
But getting there is the fun.
The best moments I’ve experienced in writing my novels have come:
1. When the characters take over, and I’m taking dictation
2. When the details resolve with the dream, and the conclusion crackles with life and acts as a true and valid culmination of the novel
3. When twists naturally emerge from situations and characters, and surprise me with that “eureka!” quality of a blinding flash of the obvious
Outlining is something I’ll turn to once or twice during the writing, in order to force myself to think about logistics, dramatic arcs, and themes. But once the outline has served its purpose as a tool, I turn back to the page.
Writing can be a process, but I enjoy it as a passion. That’s probably why I don’t have much process.
August 25, 2009 at 4:42 pm
craiglancaster
Kent, thanks for lending your perspective. Hope you’ll stick around here.
September 3, 2009 at 7:38 am
Guest post: Beginnings and endings « Craig Lancaster | A Mind Adrift in the West
[…] by craiglancaster When I answered a friend’s question — how do you do it? — by blog post, Carol Buchanan asked if I would like a guest to weigh in on the […]