Trying pre-writing
I’m entering (or mostly in) the murky middle of this story that was “supposed to fix all my problems”! I’m not thinking of it that dramatically, but I’m definitely not as excited about the story now as I was two weeks ago when I started drafting.
I’ve got the general outline, but the middle was definitely a little more “hand-wavy” than the clarity of the beginning piece. One of the things I’m reading is “The Happy Writer” by Marissa Meyer, whom I love and respect, and she just did a few chapters on the writing process. Getting through the messy middle was one of the chapters so here’s what I’m trying:
Pre-writing.
Essentially pre-planning a few scenes ahead in an “outline” form before drafting. I’m not going to stop drafting and go back to re-fully-outline the whole story. To me, that would be a huge interruption to my creative flow. Instead, I’m going to pause for a few minutes before my next writing session (or tonight, so I can draft tomorrow) and think through the following questions:
What happens next?
How does it get me closer to the midpoint?
What’s something that will keep it exciting for me to write?
I have some scenes I know I want to write, my “candy scenes” so I’m going to try to fill in the gaps between those scenes with things that make sense to the story and are fun to write.
Hopefully this helps me! I’m thinking that, same as drafting, daily posting may help my consistency so that’s what I’ll shoot for over the next few weeks.
