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Writing Fiction: A Structured Approach
Both fiction and non-fiction writing present their own share of difficulties. However, fiction has long played to be my most prominent sticking point, with the simplest stories requiring days (sometimes weeks) for me to work through.
From The Seat Of My Pants
Writing fiction from the seat of my pants, the way some writers seem to do, just doesn’t work for me. Maybe, I’m not naturally talented enough. Perhaps, my imagination needs a little fine-tuning. Whatever it is, employing the same structure I use for articles and features has made the biggest impact in my fiction writing. For this, technology has been my biggest ally.
Brainstorming
Most of my fiction starts with a seed idea – a word, a phrase, a thought or a concept that I can only elucidate in the littlest of ways. Some writers, I heard, are able to draw out entire novels out of that just by sitting down and writing. I, on the other hand, typically need the elegance of structure in order to make that happen.
Starting with the seed, I draw up entire branching and connecting structures using either a mind map or an outlining software. All ideas are grouped in a logical manner, often coinciding with the way I’d prefer them to appear. Not a word of the actual material gets written until I have the entire tale laid out in that format, so that my ideas are well-formed before I ever hit the word processor.
Writing
When writing, I work by group. Ideally, I like to start from the inner structures, going out. Sometimes, though, a group just begs to be written first and I acquiesce. Once each logical grouping gets written, I run the usual routine: check with an English grammar software and correct structural flaws. Proofreading happens only at the end of the entire story, as I need the cohesiveness of the tale to figure out where changes are needed.
On the surface, doing all that preparation work might seem like it will prolong the actual process. Instead, it’s allowed me to speed up my writing that I manage to finish jobs in over 60% to 75% less time than it normally took.
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