Here’s how the whole thing works.

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

Do you write your stories start to finish, or do you write scenes out of order and then assemble them in the proper order?

The easiest way to answer this is to tell you how my creative process works.

It always starts differently. It used to be a dream, now it can be anything. A random word in a conversation or something that I see happen. It might be a story I overhear in a coffee shop or an item on the news.

The result is the same.

At some point, I’ll start to watch a film on a screen in my head. It’ll be based on one of the above prompts from the last couple of days.

It’s then that I know I have a new story to write down. But I don’t know anything about it.

The best way I can describe what happens next is this.

Imagine there’s a new movie that you’ve gone to see. You’re in the cinema, the lights go down.

You have no real idea what will happen in the next couple of hours. You may have seen the trailer, a disjointed overview of a few of the best bits, but now you have to sit there and see it all, in the order that the director assembled it.

What I see is like that movie, without the benefit of the trailer.

Basically, I write down what I see, in the order it’s shown to me. I can pause and rewind the action, play in slow motion or change the position of the camera to get a better view of what’s occurring.

The one thing I can never do is fast forward. I have no idea what will happen next. As I don’t touch type, I can often go for several minutes before I look up at the screen and see what I’ve said about what I’m seeing.

And that’s it. There’s no more or less to my process. I keep writing what I see as the story develops, until I realise that I’ve reached the end. It might be the end of the story, or a convenient place to break a series.

I will go back and read the entire manuscript through at this point. The first time I did this, I was amazed to find that it all made sense.

In fact, I have found that very few alterations have been needed in any of my stories before they head off to my editor. Wherever this is all coming from, it’s complete the first time.

Any additional scenes, clarifications or changes are reserved for the rewrite, after my editor has taken a look at the first draft of the story.

And that’s how it all works for me.

What do you think about this week’s subject?

Let me know by leaving me a comment.

While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.

Until next time.

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