I'm a "forest writer" by nature, a sink-or-swim kind of guy who likes to jump right in and see where the writing takes me. This is much messier than the process used by "tree writers," who plan everything out ahead of time. I think winging is more fun but also can be more frustrating. I also can be more rewarding, full of more surprises.
At any rate, now and again my forest writing process gets in trouble deep enough that I can in the trees, the planning instincts, to come to the rescue. As now, with the Cold War novel. So today's project is, first, to write a very short chapter outline of what I have -- and then see if I can complete it for the rest of the book. Time to know exactly where I am going.
This happens to my students all the time. I permit two writing tracks, tree or forest, and many jump to forest because it sounds easier (no outlines!). However, within a month, many forest writers are so lost they backtrack and begin planning.
Most writing classes demand tree planning, period. Tree writers rule the creative writing classes. Since I'm not one, and many others are on record as not planning much, I vowed to permit options in process if ever I taught writing -- and so I have, and this, in fact, is the basic foundation of all my books on screenwriting. Forest gets very messy but it is a legitimate process.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment