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Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity. Gustave Flaubert

— Creating a Text - Susan Helene Gottfried

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?

When creating what I hope will be a new book, or a fictional outtake for my blog, or a new character to straddle both worlds — novel or blog star — there are stages involved. I’ll focus on writing books here, as the process for outtakes is very different.

For me, I have to first be inspired. Inspiration comes in many places, often somehow related to music — a lyric, a picture, maybe an interview — but it can also come from my friends, who pose questions about the fictional world I’ve created.

From there, I move into getting to know the character. Not just name and physical characteristics, but I need to know what makes this person tick. How they fit into my fictional world is an important consideration, too; having some connection to the fictional band ShapeShifter is still important to me, even if the connection is a tenuous one.

Many times, I discover this information by sitting down and starting to write. I pick a random jump-off point and go from there, letting the story evolve as I get to know the characters and/or situations. I am what many of my friends call a “pantster” — I don’t plot. I just write and let the story evolve. Once I’m at the end, I have figured out where I’m going and what the story is about.

Then begins every writer’s bane: revision and editing. I both love editing and loathe it; I’m sure most of us feel this way. There’s a rush involved in watching the story take shape and the beginning begin to match up and point to the end. There’s misery when a sentence, chapter, paragraph has to come out despite it being particularly good writing. And there’s the grind of going over ground that’s already been trodden upon. It is everything good and everything bad. I suspect I like this part of the process most, as I get to lay in bed and envision the framework I’ve created and try to figure out how to layer muscle, fat, and tissue over it. Then, I have to sit and write it and no matter how clearly my vision, what gets typed on the screen somehow always differs. Always.

Yet the end result works. It sparkles.

Susan Helene Gottfried is a writer, the author of Trevor’s Song; she blogs at: http://westofmars.blogspot.com

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— Creating a Text - Milly Johnson

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?
Personally my own experience of writing a book is that it begins with a single inspiration: something I read, something I hear that my subconscious instantly recognises as a ‘potential’ story. For instance, an article I read about clutter clearing spawned the seed in [...]

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Milly Johnson

— Creating a Text - John Fullerton

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?
In Man, just as in other sentient creatures, feeling precedes thought.
Though idealogues and clerics would wish it otherwise, consciousness is the servant of instinct.
The shiver induced by the setting sun induces the feeling of being chilly, quickly followed by the thought to go inside or pull [...]

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - John Fullerton

— Creating a Text - Ann Cleeves

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?
A moment of inspiration followed by a number of phases, of new perspectives on what the point of the book is and ideas which instigate editing and re-writes. Hard to talk about it in the abstract though, so I’ll look at my novel, Raven Black.
The [...]

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Ann Cleeves

— Creating a Text - Cynthia Harrison

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?
1. The Idea
I myself have noticed a pattern to how a book “starts” to brew in the back of my mind. One thing, a character, a house, a moral question, an incident real or imagined, starts to preoccupy me. If I’m in the midst of a [...]

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Cynthia Harrison

— Creating a Text - Andrew Taylor

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?
It’s a fascinating question (well to me, anyway, and any other writer). Most of my books begin with the gradual accumulation of ideas, like a build-up of sediment. It can take years. I mean ideas in the broadest sense, of course - anything from [...]

John Baker's Blog

— Creating a Text - Susan Helene Gottfried

— Creating a Text - Milly Johnson

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Milly Johnson

— Creating a Text - John Fullerton

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - John Fullerton

— Creating a Text - Ann Cleeves

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Ann Cleeves

— Creating a Text - Cynthia Harrison

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Cynthia Harrison

— Creating a Text - Andrew Taylor

— continue reading . . . Creating a Text - Andrew Taylor

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