I used to think that the process of writing was easy, even if the writing itself was hard. Start with an idea. This becomes a plan. Then, write the story according to that plan. There might be some errors, so do a quick check (called ‘editing’). And that was it. A straight line, from idea to completed story.

Oh, how naive I was.

The basic premise — plan, write, edit — is sound, but the practice is far more complicated. I now see that the process of writing isn’t linear but is more of a spiral.

I like the idea of having a plan before I pull up a blank page and start writing. I need to know where I’m going. But with experience I’ve learnt that no plan remains intact once I start typing. Characters say and do things I didn’t expect. I spot things in my planning that make no sense. I’ll thrown in a bit of world-building, or a throwaway phrase, and it’ll spark ideas that could improve the story.

I usually push through with the first draft. If I back-tracked for every new idea I’d never reach the end. But when I have that first draft I do my first major edit, focusing on the story.

And this is where I pick up more problems. I work through them, improving the overall story. I take a step back and return to my planning, checking these alterations work, making sure character arcs are intact and so on. And then I return to writing.

Some scenes only need tweaking. Others have to be put aside (not deleted, because I might be able to use them later). Still more have to be written from scratch.

And after all that, with this new draft, it’s back into editing. And repeat, however many times is necessary. Not a circle, but a spiral, each time drawing closer to that elusive goal of a perfect story.

How many times do I need to repeat this process? That depends on the story. Shorter works usually require less work. Sometimes the original plan only needs tweaking. For other stories the final product is totally different to that plan.

Take ShadowSiege, the second book in my Shadows trilogy. I thought that book was coming along well, and I’d reached what I imagined would be my final edit. But in re-reading the story I felt uneasy. It wasn’t working. There were major problems with it.

To correct these problems I had to practically re-write the whole book. Frustrating, but if I hadn’t done the work the book would’ve been so much weaker, leaving me struggling even more when it acme to the final book in the trilogy.

But I’m supposed to be documenting my work on this new space opera series. Why am I mentioning editing when I’m only in the planning stage?

The answer? Because knowing the process is a spiral and not a straight line gives me freedom.

Planning can be tricky. There might be moments when ideas flow, but there’s a great deal of hard slog. I’ve realised that I eventually reach a point where I’m barely tweaking anything, where I seem to hit a wall. Usually, I have a lot of scenes planned in detail (the major ones), but I have a lot of scenes where I know what needs to happen but I don’t know how.

Once this happens, I remind myself of that spiral. The plan will change, so it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’. As long as I have an outline, I’m good to go.

I’ve reached that point with the first book in this new series. So I’ve fired up Scrivener, opened my planning in one window and a blank page in the other, and started writing.

In an earlier post I mentioned the plotter/pantser dichotomy — writers either plan before writing, or write to discover the plan — and how most writers sit somewhere between these extremes. In my process I have some form of a plan when I start writing, and this helps me get going. But I don’t know everything. Especially when I’m working in a new story-universe, with new characters and cultures and technology, I can’t know everything ahead of time. I have to write to sink into this universe, to learn what makes my characters tic, how their societies function, how they interact with technology. And the plot (the story) can only develop once I have a better understanding of these things.

I have the formality and structure of a plan, but I also have the freedom to discover as I go. It’s a journey.
And already things are changing. I think one of my characters’ arcs is going to totally change. There are minor characters who, as I’ve been writing, seem to be taking on more importance.

I’m also uncovering themes. I’ll return to this in the future (theme is an important area, and it’s something that I’m constantly learning about).

And if the story becomes a mess? It doesn’t matter, because there’s always editing. Then amending planning, then re-writing. I could start worrying that everything’s going wrong, but I prefer to trust the spiral.