I’ll confess, process is my crutch.
World-build first. To whatever degree the magic or science is hard (rather than soft), get it worked out so I won’t be accused of nonsensical worldbuilding. Think about the themes that resonate and ask in whose story those themes will best resonate.
Or see the character first, their pain and their hopeless longing. Then start to see the world that did this to them. Then start to see the magic or science, whether hard or soft, that’s part of that world.
But I do not. I do not. Simply dive into a new MS.
One way or another, I usually do tons of prewriting on this stuff. Experience has taught me that when I dive in without a clear sense of who everyone is, what they want, and the world, I end up throwing stuff on the page and spend all kinds of time (and pain) trying to figure out why things are how they are (and trying to get them to make sense).
I hate doing that, so I’ve trained myself to journal, prewrite, world-build, and character-explore heavily before I dive into MS. That MS feels like some sort of hallowed ground, even though not a single phrase from the first draft will make it to the querying draft. I don’t want to contaminate it with half-baked visions. That’s what the entire prewriting and worldbuilding process is for–working through the equivalent of many first-draft MSS without wasting time on surface-level MS text that will get thrown out.
This has been working so well. Why did it have to change?!
I’ve been journaling something new for a while now but have never sat down to wrangle the world, people, and their motivations into definite form. Then last night, the first scene just came. So I just wrote it down.
I felt really freaked out. Like I had somehow imprinted a half-baked version of the story on my brain without going through that essential process!
(Of course, every crap draft imprints itself on my brain in the same way, so what’s the big deal?)
Well, it felt big.
But there’s another side to this. Maybe all that wrestling in the prewriting process allows me to invest too much intellectual energy in complexity. If I can’t remember the details of how something works without referencing foundational materials, how will the reader handle it when they pop the book open at the end of a long day? As a reader, I struggle to remember anything but the most essential network of details. I’ll be reading a great book that’s not complex at all, and I can’t even remember a lower-emphasis reference when I encounter it.
So maybe it’s time for me to fly blind as a writer, work without that clear factual foundation from prewriting, and incorporate only the things I can remember unassisted.
Moving forward
Like what you’re reading? I write SFF and hope to get an agent soon. Join my email newsletter, and I’ll send you updates on publications. I only use it for major news, so you won’t hear from me too often.
Ready to get the newsletter?
NOTE: I also use the pen name Leo Vaughn. Newsletters will probably come from this name.