PROCESS is Progress
Do you mark progress in finished work, or in your process? I know I’ve brought it up before, but what do you use to measure your improvement?
A few days ago I was waiting for sockets to heal where my wisdom teeth used to be, so I went back to a pile of index cards representing a plot I crafted in in 2006. After surveying the ’story’ (shameful to call it that) I re-plotted it using Jeff Kitchen’s Sequence, Proposition, Plot technique, and made it exponentially better. Direct contrast, old plotting method vs. new plotting method. Light years difference.
“But the story isn’t done, so how does that help? Come on, we want to read something! Publish or die!”
When I started this blog in 2005, I didn’t even really know how to tell stories. 2004 - 2007 were a three year crash course in storytelling for me. Soldiers have to go through boot camp before they get sent out on the battlefield. There is a minimum ramp up period for any skill set or endeavor.
At this point, it would be stupid to measure my progress by the number of pages written. I consider it good fortune and fortitude that I survived churning out an embarassing draft and a half via the good old fashioned method. I consider it a minor bullet point next to the improvements in my process — the things I’ve learned about how to put a story together. I’ve never needed to know how to write. It seems to come quite naturally to me, as I hope this blog is partial evidence.
What hasn’t come naturally is a good process for developing stories that were worthy of writing. It seems in recent months I have slain that particular beast, although I don’t fault you if you are reluctant to take my word for it. It is my personal responsibility to deliver you proof in product. All in due time. All I can really say about that is that I’m working on it. I swear.
Along my journey thus far, I’ve gotten a lot of bad advice. Not from our local writing blog circle, but from shall we say… certain peers. These peers do not write fiction, but merely entertain the idea of writing fiction. It would be entirely fair to dub them the Armchair Authorities on Authorship.
You get a lot of traditional quotes on writing from these people, and to be fair I’ve pulled a few dusty old quotes out of the hat now and then. What I feel separates the men from the boys and the girls from the women is the struggle. Strife. An aspiring storyteller must struggle until he or she starts to see the quotes about writing as a glaring omission of what is the greater truth about the process of writing; Natural selection doesn’t just apply to tigers in the jungle. Natural selection applies to your process just as much as it does any other living creature. Wait, what?
That’s right, I just called your process a living creature.
The only universal advice I feel comfortable dispensing is to treat your process like a living being. Feed it. Nurture it. Facilitate evolution. The more you learn and the faster you improve, the faster your process will evolve towards utility and pragmatism — a process that works.
Some people arrive there by writing ten bad novels before they write a good one.
Others like me, upon writing a very bad novel and a half tend to turn the inquisition upon the process that created the bad novel and sort out all the kinks. Quarantine and incubate the process for a couple years. When you decide to train yourself, then stop screwing around and train yourself.
Don’t just treat the symptoms of your dysfunctional storytelling process. Cure the disease.
You have to figure out what works for you, and you rarely do that by just doing what everyone else tells you to do. More often than not, the advice of others is just the tired old quips and quotes about writing. If we are to strike up a worthy dialogue about storytelling, I’m less interested in what Hemingway had to say about writing than I am to hear about the evolution of your process as a storyteller, and what works for you.
As for me? For now, the evil gnarls in my process have been vanquished and it’s time to crank out some stories.
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May 31st, 2007 at 2:51 am
I’ve enjoyed reading this blog for the past few days and decided to stop lurking. I really enjoy your topics on the technicalities of the craft. Tried the supernotecard softward and haven’t come down on a verdict yet. I’m planning a five book series, so to keep my head up, I definitely count my planning as progress - especially when I learn something new about my story and work it in and make the story more interesting. Again, love the blog!
Bri
May 31st, 2007 at 3:25 am
Bri, thanks for crossing over from lurker to commenter.
A couple thoughts on SuperNotecard: The joy of it is a bit more apparent if you’ve worked 3×5 note cards for a while and witnessed the bloat factor as you start needing an entire empty table or floor space to lay them out.
Also, on the surface it appears like all it does is virtual note cards. Read the help/tutorial/manual and learn how to use Factors. Factors are basically elements like characters, locations, items, things. You can start cross-referencing your factors using markers on your cards, so from a glance you know that Bob is in Scene 22 just at a glance because he’s the purple character. I haven’t really found a use for Categories yet. The manual is a bit cryptic. I just love being able to lay down my scenes as if they were single cards.
Oh, and you can expand the size of the cards if they’re too tiny. Almost like yWriter, the interface is confusingly simple at times. Things are right under your nose without realizing it. I’m used to programs in general that are a lot more complex than this, so it took a little while for me to appreciate how much it does for its simplicity.
Re: Five book series — Yikes! I’ve only got three in the pipe and I’m already overwhelmed. I can’t imagine five. If they involve large, episodic-styled character arcs then I say you’re gonna need all the plotting, planning, and cross-referencing you can get.
SuperNotecard may not be enough. You may need a program like Liquid Story Binder or a mind mapper like Mind Manager or Freemind. I still use mind mappers a lot, even with SuperNotecard. SuperNotecard is just my simple interface for breaking out plots.
Anyway, thanks for commenting!
May 31st, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I’ve never ‘measured’ my progress per say. I write. With each novel I learn something and I apply it to the next. When I go back and read old writing it becomes apparent that I’ve progressed, and I know I’ve learned and improved, I’ve just never stopped to think about it.
I’m one of those though that doesn’t think much about my writing–analyze my writing I guess is the better term. I just sit and write…good or bad I don’t know, but it works for me.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jennifer, let’s say that writing is separate from storytelling. Prose craft is a different process from putting the story together. In what ways have you become better about putting a story together?
May 31st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I’m constantly surprised by how little I know about writing. I’ll pick up a new book and learn at least a few things, which I then apply to the wip. For me, progress is this journey of exploration-learning-application. I doubt I’ll ever be to the end of the road, so I’ve decided to try and enjoy the views along the way.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Therese, you’re right there is no end to self-improvement. I wish I could apply something to the work in progress, finish it then move on. I’m doing that now, finally… that I’ve found all the story dev and advanced plotting techniques that I’ve been looking for, for years!
I just can’t let a story suck because there was a missing piece of know-how, or storycraft. I will turn over every rock on the planet if my intuition tells me there must be something out there that can help with a specific problem.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am
In what ways have you become better about putting a story together?
I don’t think I can answer that question. I know I’ve improved, but I couldn’t say how. I just know with each novel the story is a little better crafted than the previous…learning from experience…
:)
June 4th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
You’re earning your writing wings, and you’ve figured out how to do it (there’s only one way…).
Excellent post, mainly because you’ve authentically learned so much by putting yourself in the trenches. This is writing success, and I see much more for you — because you work on it with drive and commitment, and you’re actively figuring out the way, for you, to make it work.