HI FOX ! i was just wondering how u plan your book/stories/etc. because from what you've said abt ur book it sounds rly complex,, im just wondering how u keep track of it all and plan it out and stuff!
omg thank you so much, i’m so flattered by your being interested! this is the most elaborate piece of fiction i’ve ever written, it’s taken much more pre-work than i usually do, though my process is essentially the same as what i’m about to say, just shorter.
i grew the idea of this book, no writing whatsoever, for about 8-9 months. i think i may have produced a few first pages during that period of time, but they didn’t work for a myriad of reasons (the idea wasn’t ready!). for a long time, just thinking and growing and jotting down ideas was all my book was. i actually just found a scrap of paper in an old pocket of my jeans that are plans for this book from seven months ago, containing characters and plotlines that no longer exist (if you’re curious: it was Waldo, a character who appeared in my virtual reality video game before I decided to conflate it w the police force, absorbing his character into another).
i have a sideblog on this hellsite where i’ve posted rough outlines, ideas, summaries, and reblogged relevant art and articles. doing research really helped me grow the book further and to figure out what exactly i wanted to talk about and what would “fit” with everything else I was spinning. 3-4 months in, i drew up a rough outline of how my chapter sequence might go (as it’s rotating perspectives), and then worked on editing & completing that. since i wrote it, i’d say that 70-80% of the book has changed completely.
when i feel ready to start writing, i start at the beginning, focusing on making it as engaging and interesting as possible. while writing, it will quickly become evident what parts of my plan actually work versus what parts i just kind of scribbled in as filler. because i’ve been imagining this idea for such a long time, i always have a myriad of directions in which i can go at once, because i have so much information about this world that i want to convey. i knew the general movement of the storyline, for example, was for television to go to ExLA, and that he knew this spiritual river witch who has an army of children. i didn’t realize that they were at odds until i started writing. additionally, i ended up finishing the chapter with a completely unplanned detour into the life of another character i thought was secondary during planning, who i now think might deserve her own perspective.
once i have enough words on the page, i approximate how many chapters there are going to be and i fill in rough outlines in each chapter of what i think is going to happen. these are changing constantly. i was talking earlier about how i have a cop character, quiz, who i know very little about. i’ve marked out her chapters and how her story intersects with the others, but it’s only while i’m writing that i’m starting to understand how she’ll best fit in with the rest of the squad.
i keep everything that i delete in a separate, wordpad document titled “[TITLE OF BOOK] - darlings,” so that i may freely delete while still saving dialogue, setting, or phrases that i might want to reuse/save for later. usually, i don’t dip back in, but it makes me feel better about deleting thousand word chunks, especially when i need to.
i feel like i didn’t do a very good job describing it, but there it is! with my first novel, Bad, i had been thinking about it for ages and ages, then i saw my friend in a (completely weird and unrelated play) and driving home, i suddenly knew it was about a stealing puppies from a dogfighter. and then i just went from there, trying to understand how i could fit all these other small scenes and details that had been stewing for months around this very simple concept of “a dog fighter is trying to ruin her life.”
tl;dr, i guess i’d best describe it as looking at a really huge machine. and i started by seeing a few of the gears separate from the machine, and then i figured out what they did. the longer i look, the more of the machine i start to see, until i get a general understanding of what i think the machine looks like from the outside and what it does. then, i guess, i get to work building the machine, exchanging certain pieces for others and what have you.
thank you SO MUCH for asking i hope this answer is okay it means so much to me when you guys ask about my writing!
