John Baker’s Blog

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?

For me there is usually the bright flash of the cool idea, that item that seizes your imagination and won’t let go. Sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes it’s a cool scene. Sometimes its a series of things I want to riff about. But they are very much slices, bright points of light.

The next step I hit is connecting it all, stewing it up into something cohesive so that I know I have at least a skeleton to follow. That is done by an outline, notes scribbling, and collecting all that for my novel into a file on the computer and organizing it.

After that, I start writing, and that’s the work. The daily slog of working from point to point, trying to connect all these points to make something that will take my reader along on a ride that showcases each of these things and gets them excited about them in the same way I was originally excited when those flashes first hit me.

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of The Future winner, and Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer Finalist. He blogs at: Tobias Buckell.

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my RSS feed