Mindpen - Mindpen

Prompt #509

“Being evil is not as easy as you think it is.”

Wow, I’m just so in love with writing??

Literally everything about the process is amazing. The initial excitement of having so many ideas, thinking and brainstorming nonstop because you can’t stop thinking about it. Actually writing it out is so thrilling because you’re actually creating and seeing your vision come to life. All of a sudden, the story takes over, the characters come to life, and all you want to do is keep writing because it’s so ridiculously fun. And finally the satisfaction of reading back on your own work, and being like “wow this is amazing, and I created this”. Then you’re rereading all of your writing and it’s so good, and then all you want to do is to continue writing so that you can see where it goes next and then reread it and continue writing and

Writing is so cool you guys, and you’re all so cool for being writers.

I have no idea if this will help anyone else, but here it is!

I write dialogue easily. like. I can toss out 1000 words of dialogue in an hour or less. mostly to outline how a scene or chapter plays out. but it comes naturally to me. it always has. I taught a creative writing class about it in high school. :D

description doesn’t come naturally for me. so the way I hack my writing process is:

Stage One: I outline with dialogue, because it comes easily for me.

“Character A speaking.”

“Character B speaking.”

“Character A speaking.”

Etc.

Stage Two: I go in with some brief descriptions and details, or things to remember such as:

“Character A speaking.”

“Character B speaking.”

[Character A definitely flips off Character B]

“Character A speaking.”

[Character B grins]

[they’re walking through the city and the sun is setting and they nearly get hit by a car yikes]

Stage Three: Then I go back through and start adding real descriptions and details to the conversations, and either reworking entire lines of dialogue, or deleting them if they’re not needed. 

Character A walked along the sidewalk, kicking at scattered pebbles as he gestured about how his day at work had been.

“And then she tossed a drink all over me!”

“She must have thought you were thirsty-”

Character A flipped Character B off, smacked him on the shoulder, and resumed his rant.

“Anyway-”

A flurry of motion and a loud honk tore through the calm between them, and they both jumped backward away from the car that nearly pulled itself up onto the sidewalk where they were.

“Hey, fuck off!”

“Sidewalks are for people!”

“And dogs!”

“And dogs!”

But writing dialogue first helps me set the pacing for the scene or chapter, see how characters interact, see how they work with each other, how they treat each other, it helps me simplify their interactions and the mood of what’s happening. 

I hope this helps someone out. I’ve tried to do the whole ‘write everything at once’, but having multiple stages of writing have helped lessen my stress and allowed me to have some breathing room for plot lines, and make pacing feel more natural and organic.

Question.

Writing peeps. HOW?

JUST HOW???

I have probably been world building for over a year now, and I have more than enough to start actually writing a story ( I have a plot, characters, all that good stuffs) But I have just fallen down a rabbit hole of world building more and more each time.

Just how do you people stop?

Question for my fellow writers

Okay, so characters. 

I know what each character’s personality should be, and there’s parts in the story where each of them gets to show off, this is who they are, this is their personality. But outside of those moments, they sort of seem like the same person. Like, if you hadn’t read the parts where they show who they are individually, they’d all give off the same vibes. It’s almost like the story is separated into plot and character scenes. Any ideas on how to fix this?