I feel like we're all still trying to figure out our process :) And thank you, I'm so glad! They're a lot of fun for me to try too. I'm constantly learning!
I haven’t even started to develop a process yet. I want to start writing short stories (and maybe even novels one day) in my spare time. I just discovered Kate’s channel and her videos are giving me so much motivation and so many ideas on how to start!!
Random Note: I just realized how much Kate has gotten confident in being in front of the camera. Her voice used to be quite high in her older videos (I think she mentioned this before?). Anyway, it's nice to see more information on your writing process and tools😁😊 Edit: I just realized how much of a writing process I *don't* have 😅🙈
BAHAHA, yes, I've definitely gotten more comfortable! Sometimes I still struggle, but just like writing, there's only one way to improve: by doing it! :) But this is a great reminder for me to see how far I've come and thank you for noticing!! And I feel like it's debatable if this is a true "process" for me either! It's what I do now at least, so it'll be fun to compare. Maybe you could write out what you do now and look back on it in a year and see if anything's changed. Maybe you've have a process then! Bahaha.
Thanks to you, zero drafting has helped me put away the perfectionist in me, and just write! I used to never go far in any of my stories but now I've gained a lot of confidence with my writing
AWWW no way! I'm so glad. :) It's so cool how different processes work for different writers and my own is definitely an amalgamation of all other writers before!
I noticed a big part of your writing process is to have a physical copy of something like thoughts, drafts and planning. I feel like that’s so essential! Also love ‘the more I write, the more I don’t know’ haha love how honest and lovely you are!
I hear people talk a lot about being a pantser or a plotter but I honestly prefer the terms Architect and Gardener. Architect builds detail into every step of the way through meticulous planning before even the writing process begins while the Gardener has an idea of what they want, a "fantasy seed" so to speak, where they will plant their idea and let it flourish as they write and go back to prune it after its finished growing. I'm certainly someone who sits in the middle, someone who builds the skeleton of their story by creating the plot, outline, characters, and world while I let my characters now interact as real humans would through flowing dialogue that I write in the moment.
So I tend to tweak as I go along, but currently each stage of my process looks like this: Planning: I usually use a pencil and a notebook for this, and jot down everything and make symbols and highlight and doodle and cross things out, whatever helps me get to planning. There's something about the pencil instead of the keyboard at this stage. Like you said, words on a screen or words printed out, it's all words but still it does something different. Outlining: The First Outline: I have a general idea of all parts of the book, some definite ideas about beginnings and endings, possible subplot and a fuzzy idea of who the main characters are. Things may or may not be named and at no point is this outline safe. Drafting: First Draft: I try to write a consistent amount of words a day, and I try not to edit anything ever. I have a system where I use brackets in my writing. So for instance if I have want to have a minor character move to the bow of the ship and do something useful, but I haven't named the character, can't remember the word "bow" and don't know enough about ships to know what would be useful, I would end up writing something like " as {sailor guy} moved onto the {front of the ship}, a massive wave swept over the hull, making it difficult to {do something shippy}" This helps me not break my rhythm and keeps the editor in my head from interfering. If I'm having a particularly tough day writing, I'll even drop things in like {omg this is such crap} and {I have no idea where I'm going with this} and that helps me get it out of my system and keep writing. Cool Down: Two months of no touchy, no looky! Read Through: I print the book out. The whole thing. I try to read the first draft through like I'm a reader. I take minor notes of ideas and things that confuse me, even if I answered it later, and I focus on what's actually written. The Second Outline: Next, I go through the draft and quickly make a new outline. Because, inevitably, what I thought would happen did not happen and there were some stunts involved. My old outline is what I thought would happen, this one is what actually happened. Then I look the outline over and decide if that's the story I want to tell and make notes. I smush all this into the final outline, which is now a sort of map for the book editing. Editing: This is Macro to Micro, starting with the story, the world, the characters and tweaking down to arc and tension in scenes and details and description and then finally down to line edits, word choice and spelling. Invariably, at some point in this process, I do a find and replace for all the "it's" to just be "its" and then watch for which ones actually should be "it's". I use it's all the time and I don't know how to stop myself. Do they have USB powered shock collars for writers? Pre-Final: This is where I do a bit of formatting, and read-through once more before finding Betas. From here, it goes out to Betas and comes back , hopefully with feedback, and then starts at the top of the Editing process again. Every pass makes it a little better, but at some point I also give myself a deadline to be done by. At some point it also goes out to Critique Partners too. Then more editing. Final: I've given myself a deadline to submit by and scrubbed the work into the best shape I can make of it, and then I start looking for agents to submit to. I submit it to the agents and get some rejections and some that don't respond. I've never been beyond this gate, so I don't know what lies on the other side. I use Scrivener for novels, my notebook for planning, Facebook to publicly state goals, Google Keep to track goals and write quick ideas, Some timer app to Pomodoro the time, www.ambient-mixer.com for writing atmospheres,Google Docs to write short stories, water, cappucino and Mountain Dew to fuel my madness and a cat bed on my desk to make my writing muse comfortable. And finally, I propose we change the official name of "Project Purple" to "Project Purple, it's pink, it's fine." :p
Thanks for the great advice! Can you tell me how many words is suitable to write a day? To keep my pace I feel i should write more words. How many can u write?
@@nathanj3528 Oh my, Are you asking me or Kate? Here's my answer, for what it's worth. I'm actually a pretty slow writer compared to some. I CAN type about 1300 words in an hour, but that's going full speed on my best day wearing my finest pearls, but typically I write about 500-700 in an hour. I get done as much as I get done because of tenacity, which is a polite word for stubborn. I feel like you should decide how long you want it to take you to finish this project, and how many words you think it might end up being and then divide the words by the days. That will tell you how many you'd have to write in a day to hit that goal. If it feels off, adjust the words per day and recalculate, realizing that the finish date is going to change. I've read about professional writers that write 10,000 words in a day and also some that write 100 words in a day. The amount isn't what makes the difference, it is coming back to it daily (or dedicated times a week) and working hard. Keep it up, you got this and Happy writing!
@@writative8285 Ohh my goodness! Thank you so much for detailing your process, I´ll use it as inspiration since I would like to write novels but funny enough the most difficult part for me is sitting down and actually writing, if you have any advice it would be appreciated. I think my problem is that I have a hard time accepting I´m doing this for me and it might not be "productive" (as studying for exams or learning new things related to work to feel more prepared) so when I sit and write I kind of feel guilty like I´m wasting time unless I´m super inspired by something.
@@floriia1096 Honestly I'd say not everything you do needs to be productive. Sometimes you can just do something because you love it. Give yourself the gift of that time with it, or time away from it if you need it. Happy writing!
@@BFedie518 I outline all my big scenes, but I don't outline dialog so I need to know whatever was said or thought in the last scene cuz it could impact this scene in some way
Once upon a time I was a pantser and I never finished anything. The one time I actually tried plotting, I finished my first draft in just over a year! I haven't actually started on a new project since that became my focus, and now that it's "done", I'm trying different methods for 2 ideas, so we'll see what happens! (also Scrivener is hands down the best thing I've ever bought for writing)
My process just changed dramatically and it's fascinating. I was sure I was a plotter because I'm obsessed with organization in every other aspect of my life. However I never finished things and outlined everything to death to the point I over thought the story so bad that I had too much anxiety to write. Then on a whim I decided to expand on and polish a scene of fanfiction I wrote years ago. That was in April it is now half way through August and I'm 17,000 words in further than I've ever gotten before. I got to 10,000 is a week! Then 15,000 in three weeks. And then life happened and I didn't touch it for 2 months. I also lost a bunch of work and was down to 14,000 and missing a few scenes. A week ago I picked it up again and now it's at 17,000. With not outline, no standard of quality (because it's a fanfiction), and an honest love for the characters I managed to write more in a week than I ever had in any other draft even after years! I'm so proud🥰
Bahaha I KNEW IT. Glad I could help answer the question! And thank you. :) I honestly feel like I don't use Scrivener to the best of its abilities, I keep to the basics and a lot of drag and drop, so I don't feel like I know enough for a tutorial/how to ish video. But I'll keep that in mind for the future when I know more and use it for more fun things bahaha.
Kate Cavanaugh oh really, I think your to humble 😉. because In the videos your docs look always so great and organized 😁. I to feel like I don’t get enough out of scrivener. In the beginning I was a bit ashamed I bought it. Because I had the traditional feeling that a writer should be capable to write in the most simple of ways. But my story got out of hand and MS word really sucks when you pass 100.000 words. Thanks for the responds!! I now know what a zero draft is and are certain going to practice it. Greetings to duke and have fun on your trip to Toronto! Proud to be a very small Patreon of yours hahahaha!! 📗📚📚
Seeing your writing process is really interesting, because I don’t really have one- I haven’t found the process that really works for me. Probably because there is so many different ways to do writing!
My favorite part of project purple is that it's pink. Because then I get to hear you say 'Project Purple! It's pink, it's fine' and then you have a great laugh.
I have learned a great deal from this video, and I have also figured out why I am getting blocked with my planning. I think using a zero draft and then refining it over time is better than trying to have everything down before writing-- when really, I need to write to discover some things. Will now use this video as inspiration to BEGIN FAST DRAFTING! Thanks a whole bunch!
I think my 'first draft' was a zero draft, because dang, so far I've changed so much! It's painful, but necessary, haha. Enjoy Canada! You should come to England soon! I'd love to go coffee shop hopping with you (though I don't think I could keep up with your coffees, I'd sure try, lol) :)
I WANT TO VISIT ENGLAND AGAIN SO BADLY. Someday soon, I hope, and I'd totally be down for getting a cup of coffee (or tea!) together. :) And yesssss "painful, but necessary" is how I describe most of my own revision work bahaha.
Now that you are a bit more experienced at Scrivener, can you make an updated "exploring Scrivener" video? I watched your old one, but it was basically you narrating the Scrivener interactive tutorial and figuring it out along with us. As a new Scrivener user, I'd love to hear the thoughts and opinions of someone a bit more experienced with this type of platform. Such as, how organizing the scenes in your manuscript works? I'm just used to writing everything in chronological order on a Microsoft Word document, so having the organizational tool would be useful, but Scrivener is really complex to me still. Having someone like you to explain it would be great! Especially since I'm attempting to write my first series on that platform
this is a little too chaotic for me personally xD but if it works for you that's the more important thing :) I haven't really developed my writing process like you have yet cause I haven't fully completed a project before so I'm still working on it :)
Yesss I was excited for this video! I always love seeing how other people deal with the writing beast, lol My first draft process, which is a mess, I think can be boiled down to: 1.) I get the idea for the premise, which I play around with until I decide if there's an actual story there. This can take anywhere from a few days to a few years. 2.) I flesh out my main character. Who are they, how do they fit into this world, what are they trying to do that drives the plot? 3.) I start at the beginning and write between 5k-20k linearly. 4.) I "outline" (basically summarize every main event in the story...in my current story it's about 8 pages) and begin jumping all over the place, fleshing out chapters non-linearly. 5.) Once I hit about 40k I re-write my "outline" based on what I've plantsed, then continue writing chapters fairly non-linearly (though I do favor earlier chapters to try to get a continuous stream of story finished). 6.) At 65k-ish, I start taking notes for what needs to be added/cut out earlier in the story for draft 2, as well as noting inconsistencies that I'm aware of without seeking them out specifically. I'll find them and point them out to myself when I re-read draft one later. 7.) I finish (????) the first draft somewhere between 80k and 120k words based on the story. At that point I'm so desperate to work on something else that it's not even a problem to let it sit for a while before going back to it. Ideally this whole process would take about 4-5 months, but sometimes there's a years-long gap between steps 3 and 4 or 4 and 5.
Yes! Seeing it on the page typed out is so different than seeing it on the screen or in hand writing. It's all different. Seeing it differently is so helpful! I am doing a major rewrite of my WIP, turning a novel into a memoir because the fiction parts just weren't working. It's a major rewrite but hearing others doing the writing thing is important, so I don't feel like I'm the only one doing such a crazy thing, lol.
Kate, honestly you are such an inspiration for me. I recently found your channel and I don't think I've ever been so motivated to write in my life. I've still been trying to figure out my writing process, so this video and your 'I Try Writing Like...' videos help so so much.
Hey Kate! I really appreciate this video because I have been starting to write a lot more. I am currently drafting my third novel, and I am going to be trying to publish it, and this video really helped me figure out what writing process I use! I love your videos!
Hi Kate :) Hope you're having a blast in Toronto. Thank you so so much for your awesome vlogs! They've been saving my sanity lately haha. I'm 2nd / 3rd drafting (who knows???) right now, but I'm under a really strict deadline, so it's quite exhausting. Watching your writing experiments and vlogs always motivate me :) I used to watch only advice videos on authortube, but started second-guessing myself while writing all the time, so this has been incredibly helpful. As to your process, yay I can relate with the pantsing / plotting mix. I don't like "constructing a story", but I have an idea where it's going beforehand and then it goes wild on the page haha. I love that exploratory phase! My first working title was "The Frieda Kilburn Saga" but now she's not even in this book and it follows the life of her grandpa instead xD I also printed out my draft and thought a lot of the chapters weren't bad, but now in the actual revision process I'm rewriting eeeeeverything. I guess it's nice getting the story out and then infusing it with our improved writing abilities? As for writing tools, I have to try out Aeon! I'm writing High fantasy with 10 different viewpoints, so...I could use that help ;) I discovered scrivener about two months ago and I loooove it. Before that I was using google docs and it was definitiely not the same xD Scrivener is so useful! Anyway, thank you for this. The timing was perfect for me this morning. I wanted to watch a video of yours to get into the writing mood and saw "uploaded 2 minutes ago" :) I'm hoping to join the community a bit more once I made the deadline. It looks so lovely and supportive
It's so relatable. I think your zero draft might be very close to the full plot summary ("argumento") I was supposed to write in class. I don't really know what my process is, but having a full detailed summary of the stuff supposed to happen helps me a lot
You mentioned how the side character could be more interesting and become the main character... Girl that just sort of happened to me the other day and it was not until now that I have realized that... And I've been on and off outlining and drafting this story for several years... Watching your vids is getting me to strive to organizing my massive storyline into a complete outline and concurring the beast of sideplots lol. I feel like I'm writing a long show series by the amount of twists and turns my characters are giving me.
I actually started a writing journal after watching a couple of your videos and seeing you use one and let me tell you, it is the best decision I have made for my writing. it has already helped me so much with keeping everything organized and taking notes and whatever else.
I used to be a pantser! I've become a plantser, but I have seven stages of editing. Draft. Read through. Word list to eliminate. Hemingway or ProwritingAid app. Print and read. Read out loud to my mother, then my husband. Betas. Proof copy. It's worked for me through most of my novels and shorter works. It's fun to see what changes, gets taken out and put back in as you learn more about what works best for you.
fwiw I have Scrivener for windows and, mind you, I've never had a MAC. But, Scrivener for Windows is amazing and a powerful tool and helps me get things done. Actually since I started using it ages ago, I haven't bothered with anything else. Anyway, thanks for the awesome video! I really wan to check out that timeline thing as I've never heard of it.
Another awesome video! I think the zero draft is a great idea. I usually have my first draft after my rough draft. I have several rewrites sometimes when I’m not happy with it. My current WIP is on my third draft. I write about three hours a day, sometimes more. I work best in the morning, from 9 TIL 11:30 with my coffee. Occasionally write in the evening when kids are asleep around 9 TIL 10:30. I want to try and fast draft at some point though, I’ve not tried that yet. 😁🤔
I liked the 'two month rest' advice of yours. If I'm not wrong, Stephen King also gave a similar advice in his book 'On Writing' to give the draft a rest for some time before you read to re-draft or edit it. I think it is a great idea because when you read it after the 'rest period', it feels like reading a whole new book and when you read it from a reader's POV, I think it gives you a more detailed idea about what or how the readers would want it to be (or how they would not want it to be)! I mean it would give a better idea about what to add and more importantly what to remove from the first draft! As SK says, 'Length of Final Draft'='Length of First Draft' minus 10% Btw Kate, I just came across your channel today and I must say your videos are really very inspiring especially the 'I tried writing like...' series. Keep posting!
RIGHT. This is what I wanted to do, but I was stopping myself for fear that it would not work. But the only reason this did not work in the past is 1)- inconsistency, and 2)- not knowing story structure. Now that I am conquering one and know more about the other, I am ready to just WRITE.
Printing out my drafts is my favourite part, I love being able to write on my manuscript and stick colour tabs all over the place so I can follow up on different threads going on as I go through and edit. It's so satisfying to hold the thing you made in your hands!
The thing about my writing is that it is all over the place. I don’t plan anything I just spill the words out of my mind into the paper and see where it takes me. And the story doesn’t come to me in order. So I always end up with a pile of paper that needs to be read and rearranged. And to be honest i enjoy discovery writing just because I am never bored. The story is a mystery to me just like it is a mystery to the reader.
ok, I think I wrote 22 "zero drafts" in one year for my book. It was my selfknowing of writing skills drafts. Now it's really tricky. I've got my story, sooooo... :( Need to write it now. I enjoy watching your entusiasm. It reminds me of my youth, said man in his 30 XD
My first writing teacher/mentor said the same thing about printing out manuscripts for the read through after a break. Also, what you call a zero draft, I call a story search. I basically spend 6-8 weeks doing sort of a scene by scene outline. But what it really does is simply cover the few key points in each scene I mentioned in my vid on navigating scenes. At that point, I can usually see at a glance what needs to be added or cut. I don’t care about the wording in the first draft either. I’m looking to get the emotional core between the characters first. In a nutshell, that’s my process. All ideas go in a notebook assigned to each book. And i don’t start the scene card until the notebook is somewhere between a third and half filed with enough about my characters and world to know the idea has stuck with me long enough to keep coming back to it for a little while.
You have inspired me to experiment with my own process, yet again. I've thought about how I process life. I'm always escaping to, "write out my thoughts to understand what I'm going for", as you said. It occurred to me while watching this bit of yours that I should do a WHOLE story that way. Then my initial brilliant idea wouldn't be lost in the minutia of dialogue or describing characters. So I did it. And may I say I am so thankful. SO THANKFUL I got to watch you experiment with other methods and pick out parts that really worked in your own method. I haven't been this ecstatic about my WIP in a decade!
I love learning other writing processes. As someone who tends to be way too much of a perfectionist, I feel like the zero draft could work well for me, take the pressure off while getting the ideas down initially. Thanks for sharing, you're awesome.
Thank you thank you SO much for talking about that timeline software! I didn’t know about it and after just a couple hours of using it, I figured out the perfect time in my novel to introduce a character earlier in the story AND discovered a reoccurring element that I hadn’t realized was reoccurring which I am now going to be more thoughtful about. Girl, you changed my life! 😂 thank you!!
I'm so happy to hear that you're a under writer. I'm as well, one of my wips ended up being 40+k words. I enjoy knowing about your writing process, and my own is similar to yours! :D Thanks for sharing.
I'm so happy to watch your videos and return to the older ones. What you say about taking two months off between drafts is such a great idea. I'm about to start revisions on my new novel and it's been two months since drafting. It often helps to see how my methods match up to others.
I don't write novels, I write comics, but all of your videos inspire me to improve the story part of my comics, so thank you for videos like these. Your writing and preparation style is so interesting a gives me ideas of how to make my stories better as well even though your process leans on words, page counts, etc and my process requires drawing pages and less is more (24-36 pages is best) but it's surprising how relatable and useful this is. Thank you! edit: The pantser vs outlining thing too. I literally met with an editor from Jump Square (part of Shounen Jump if you're at all familiar with manga magazines) with a comic I just came with a month before and had no time to outline. Whereas I have been working on the outline for a fantasy adventure manga for almost 4 years now. So ignoring the manuscript drawing process your writing process is super relatable. The naming thing too...I usually leave names at the end of the process because they aren't the forefront of the plot.
Just finished my very first First Draft, so I'll see how my planned process works for me. I was an intern for an editor and they actually also printed out the text to edit it, which is why I plan to do it as well. So there seems to be something to it ;)
What's your writing process? - Outline the novel by 3 acts, then within those acts, into shorter 3 acts 9if that makes sense). I like to make tables - that show the timelines and character development, as well as relationship development. One really important part of the writing process is READING. I truly believe that readers make the best writers. I am such a plotter - to a crazy extent. I plan every single scene and know what needs to be done in each. What are your favorite writing tools to use? I use Scrivener and like the already set out templates for novel (I think it comes with base scrivener) which has character maps and setting maps etc. I also love the voice recorder app on my phone - i often find late at night I get ideas/daydream conversations so I will speak the conversations between the characters and record it so I can write it out later as dialogue. it flows really well.
Omg, your videos are very good and despite most of them being longer than 25 min, I never think, “When will this be over”, because the time just flies.
Thank you so much for talking about how you zero/fast draft!! I feel like this is the natural method for me but I always felt like that was somehow “not the correct way” so I don’t really allow myself to go that route - meaning I don’t get past an initial braindump or two. Hearing you describe your method is helping me feel like I can explore what comes naturally to me and legitimizes it for me. Thank you!! 💐
hi Kate, I‘m from Germany and I hava basically no idea, how I‘ve found your channel, but I am so glad I did! A lot of videos about writing just stress me but your videos never do, they are just so inspiring! It is so cool to see your writing process especially because I am a underwriter as well and I feel like hardly anyone is talking about this! Thank you a lot for your videos ❤️
I realized, watching writing process videos, how much I don't have a process! XD I literally just write in Microsoft Word 2007, write as much as I know and when I'm stuck or when I'm out and about, write in a notebook (I have like a thousand writers notebooks) to get ideas or just to help me out.
I used to be solely a pantser. I used to sit down at my computer and write. Now I'm more of a plantser. I usually have an idea of the first few chapters/scenes in my head and usually by chapter 10 or so I have an idea of what I want the ending to look like and where I want some of the characters to be in terms of who they are. Sometimes I write highly detailed outlines, but mostly I have a basic idea for what's going to happen in the scene and that's what I write off of
I used to be a pantser when I wrote fanfiction and short stories, but I find that that is a lot harder to do that with a novelSo right now, I'm creating an extremely detailed outline, which is sort of like your zero draft, I guess. I'm literally going through the story and writing down the basic plot and random dialogue in bullet point form, separated out into scenes/chapter breaks. I feel like this is giving me a much better feel for the storyline as a whole, and it's much easier to add stuff in and move things around. I just got scrivener, so I'm hoping it will have a better outlining feature than just a word document with bullet points haha. I also write notes in a notebook of ideas I have. I'm planning on making this into a series, so I'm trying to think of some nice threads that can later be woven into future books.
I clicked on this (in December 2020) cuz of the Zero Draft thing and the printing thing. 2 things I do. The zero draft is the version where I'm really just getting to know my story and characters. I'm an underwriter (as I have recently figure out) and i can only get a 1st draft after I make a zero draft and edit and revise that draft. I often times even have a -1 or even -2 draft. These drafts r worse than or comparable to a brainstorm. The negative drafts r the drafts that I completely ditch. The first draft is when I start adding those words to the completely underwritten draft. Sometimes I'll make a separate google doc or take a new page from a binder and focus on a single scene and expand that scene. I haven't gotten past this draft yet so idk how my process will evolve. I just know what I have so far, and every draft gets a print out.
Still totally trying to figure out my process halfway through my first manuscript lol It has been a heavy learning experience, but I've enjoyed the struggles along the way so far
OMG, I love this video! I'm a sucker for watching videos about how other writers write and where they write (like "writing space tour" videos). Also, I love that you're, sort of, in between a pantser and a plotter (since you know a bit of the beginning, middle, and end but you don't outline everything before you write). I feel like my process is, kind of, similar to yours. If I outline too much, I get bored of the story too quickly but if I don't outline at all, I'm never able to stay on course. At least, not enough to tell a good story. Sidenote: I love that you print out your novel after you write your discovery draft. I bet it feels great to just hold it in your hands! I think I might do that after I finish what I'm working on.
I've watched so many of your writing vlogs those last weeks and they inspired and motivated me so much! I want to write so much now and I absolutely can't wait for NaNoWriMo. Maybe this time I'll win. (Or at least get halfway there.) Your attitude towards writing is so positive and motivating! I absolutely love watching your videos, especially your writing vlogs, in the background while I write. You helped me so much with this, especially with your drafting process. I'm struggling with getting words down a lot, but the fast drafting is really a nice option. It's just writing everything down and I don't have to keep any of it! Plus, seeing the progress of words I've made is just super motivating. I really like that you print out your novels too. I can't wait to print one of mine some day too! It would be so cool. You've totally charged my love for writing again and I'm so motivated for NaNoWriMo now that I just can't wait for it to come. I hope you'll stay this motivated and positive towards writing and keep to inspire other writers and your viewers! (I know I repeated myself a lot, but I just want it to be very clear that your videos are so inspiring and motivating.)
I'm unpublished. And I have a full-time plus job. In my job I do a lot of writing that is very technical to the field I'm in. so I discovered that I produce more interesting fiction if the first or what I also have called zero draft is handwritten. From the handwritten draft I dictate with a dragon natural speech to type. I use Word for all my drafts. I use scrivener to track scene work and details about characters. Then I print as well after it's all types out and all the scenes written. I fix word choices, and note where more is needed. Then I go back into Word and add more. I sometimes print a scene or two to read myself without using an office store. My plan is to print and read before I send it to an editor and I'll use a store for that. I'm not there yet.
I write somewhat similarly to you - I have an idea of early scenes, a vague notion of the "middle" and how it should end. The difference is that I tend to write chronologically - I need to have something happen before I can write what happens after it! haha
Ahhhh! I'm so glad you answered my question about which draft is which!! I'm about halfway through my first first draft and hope to finish it by mid September. It's fantasy, so I feel like I might have to set up certain milestones for each draft (like "make sure the world building is complete-enough by this draft" and magic etc.) But we will see! Thank you for talking about your process :) I'm somewhere between a plotter and a pantser, too. Also, because you've been such an inspiration and you've motivated me to have more concrete effort put into my writing, I'm calling my WIP "Project Portal". I really appreciate you, Kate!! Oh, by the way, I have Scrivener for Windows -- I've used it since the beginning of July and bought it recently. In case you or anyone is wondering, yes Scrivener has less cool things on Windows, but it has improved over the last few years (the internet tells me) and is worth it to me on Windows! My main peeve with it is that you can't highlight a selection of text and have the WC appear at the bottom of the screen, BUT you can highlight a selection and right click it to see the word count!!
Never knew zero drafts existed. I honestly might start doing that because I only write as I have my outline. They both need to be up to date or else I really can't do anything productive, which means that I'm stuck doing only outlining and burning myself out before I can actually write something in my manuscript. I also totally agree with you about the 2 months! I usually do 3 months when I've got my outline done so that when I come back, it's as a better writer, and I can analyze it better and more thoroughly. Edit: It's nice to see that I don't have a process at all, lol. I need to work on that.
This is exactly what I needed. I've been looking for writers breaking down their process from idea to finished product. Could anyone recommend any others?
Oh! I'd never heard of a zero draft before! That's basically what I'm doing right now and I felt like I was kind of weird for not knowing basically.... Anything before going in. It's nice to know I'm not alone in that!!
YESSSS! I'm having an amazing time. :) I'm chilling in my hostel right now and then going to be coffee shop hopping later. :) And yessss, do it! I've found it's especially helpful for fantasy/sci-fi genres!
Kate Cavanaugh that’s so cool! Never been to Canada but I really want to go someday soon. I really want to try ketchup chips lol. What’s it like staying at a hostel? At this point I’ll try anything, this fantasy novel is taking way too long, I’m all out of sorts.
It's so strange, Kate! For me, it's actually different. My first draft would technically be your second draft, and your zero draft would be my outline. I love comparing and contrasting all of our different processes, and maybe someday I'll make a video on mine :)
Your writing videos are so helpful, I've been trying to figure out my process for the longest time and seeing you trying things and explaining your process is so interesting. It's really motivating me to try different things.
Thank you so much for including the tools you use, I really appreciate it! I’ve been using Microsoft word and then about five different notebooks for all of my writing, plotting, and note taking for about two years and by now it is just confusing and jumbled and I can’t remember where I’ve written anything down, so I’ve been looking for some better ways of organizing. Thanks again, love your channel 💗💗
I'm still trying to figure out my process too. Though I know that usually, a story of mine starts with characters. They usually are the first ones to pop in my head, and they shout at me who they are way more than I create them. I also know that I loooooove planning and worldbuilding before I fully invest in the writing itself, though it generally happens side by side. I just really like to know the world around the characters before I write in it. And I like to plan a little bit too, or lay down random ideas that i can use later. But in all honesty, I lack discipline to sit down and actually write and work on it. That's what I'm missing most, but I will work on that. Thankfully, your videos have helped me a lot to get back into the mindset of writing! ♥
Just to let you know you're really helping me figure out my writing style and routine, after I watched your writing like jk Rowling video I did a timeline of what happens in the storyline then a table of what information I need to add for each character in each scene. I'm also writing by hand then transferring it onto my laptop. It's really helped because now I know what I need to write and what's coming next, its made it so much easier ❤️ thank you so much I might finally finish my book ❤️
I love writing process videos. My side goal of camp this year was figuring out my outline process. And I think I'm pretty close to it. I'm so ready to be done with this outline. I have so many documents I have to open and reference every time I sit down. I'm putting at least as much work into condensing all the information into one outline as I am actually making up the story. I've got an idea of what my writing process will be like but I obviously can't know until I try. I'm currently planning on making authortube videos starting in October, because what better time than prep-tober. Ideally I'll be doing an outline again and will be documenting the process.
Ooh rewatching a year later. I understand my process now - I do something similar, but call it my discovery draft. I call the next draft my second, but a lot is open to change between the two 😁 This video helped me sort that out.
Thank you so much for sharing your process. I usually start out with knowing a little bit about what's going on, but then find myself running into a slump. Which forces me to retrace and plot out the whole thing ahead, but at which point I would often lose interest with the story, because "I already know how it ends, so meh." I really struggle with the second half of my WIPs, especially if everything is already neatly plotted. Of course if I manage to get myself actually writing, often the initial plot shifts and I discover new cool stuff on the way which I haven't even thought of until then. But getting over that half-point hurdle is a pain the ass.
I used to be a pantser for many years but now I find I have trouble getting started if I don't have a meticulous outline in front of me. I like to bullet point the upcoming scenes once I'm finished writing for the day so I'll be ready to go the next day. Otherwise I'll just sit and stare at the screen and waste half my writing time! 😂 Also, I love that you do zero drafts! Calling my first draft that helps me not be so hard on myself!
I just finished my MS (first draft--I don't zero draft), but the struggle to not want to jump into editing is real! This is actually helping me think over my own process as I've never gotten this far! It's really neat to hear how you do it, and to gather some ideas on how I can incorporate it into my own process. I saw on your IG that you were in Toronto! Hope you have/had a great time! Lol, I'm only a few hours away in distance. (You kind of remind me of one of my writing friends I made on WP; positive, very cheerful, and kind. Lol, not that my other aren't, it's just really strange sometimes :'D) I know you replied to one of my comments before on WP: I can't wait to see what you think... I'd love to see you around the forums!!!
My process has been changing so much over the years. At the moment it is to have an idea and let it percolate in my mind till I've got a rough road map. I first draft, not a zero draft because I usually keep around 80% if the bones of the draft. Then I hire a professional editor to help point me in the right direction for edits. Second draft where I'm fixing up scenes and big picture issues. The third draft is the clean up which is my least favorite path. I print out the story and go through line by line. Then I also read it out aloud, recording on my phone, to catch any final errors. I'm struggling to find cps and beta readers because my own reading habits are too sporadic, and its not fair to get folk to read mine when I can't return the favour.
I work much the same way and skip some scenes as I go. I know what is going to happen but don’t write it all down. My reasoning behind skipping scenes is by the time I’m really getting into the final ones, I find it is easier to go back and add foreshadowing without rewriting the entire “middle” scenes.
I don't fully know what my process is, but yours is similar to mine. I write what I call a zero draft in a notebook. I also write out of order. Then I transfer that into a document. I tend to change a lot of things from one version to the next. Then that is my "first" draft. Now, I haven't finished the book I'm working on so my process is unclear beyond this point. But I plan to make a copy of my first draft just so I can go back and read it later. I will then start editing the document to do my second draft. Then I will do a line edit to check for spelling and gramer errors. Then I'll let beta readers see how they like it. Then how ever many more edits I need to do.
My writing process is definitely a work in progress. :) Lately, I've been doing a lot of pretty heavy character work in the pre-writing process. Even though I never really "know" the character until I have them on the page and doing stuff, doing things like the GMC (Goal/Motivation/Conflict) chart and the Proust Questionnaire help me to dig into what makes them tick. I've never really found much benefit to the extensive character bios with questions like "what is their favorite pizza topping" or "if they could go to one concert, what would it be" although someone suggested that filling that out as I write would make it easier to find the info if I needed to refer to it later in the story or doing revisions.
I am still outlining my first book. I have little experience with writing processes. But, I can say, for sure, I feel very confident with producing good writing so I definitely think I will plot all of it in very fine detail way before I begin to write the first draft. I understand many feel this kills the creative process. But, at least for the first few books. I will plot everything in detail. My partner has written a few books already and they are definitely pantsers. All they need is the initial scene and the book basically writes itself.
I go in a bunch of steps. I build: Themes/magic: The two are linked to me so the latter is built on what I want to say. Characters World Second, Once I work on all of them enough I make paragraph summaries for every chapter I plan. Then I write an opening scene for those chapters with usually 3 or four scenes afterwards including the ending scene.I try to adhere to it, but its cool to fluctuate with events and where they'll end up later down the line when I write it. And when its done I give it like a week vacation away from my judgmental eyes as I start world building another story so that I can eject myself from the previous story I've just written.
@@KateCavanaugh I really did describe a bunch! Oops. Oh, and when you've got it done, its like you've written a little book bible and you feel like you've almost written 1/3 of a book... almost...but not really lol!
Hi, Kate! My process is a collection of hand written notes that are character descriptions and loose outlining. Like you, I usually know the beginning and especially the end with stuff in the middle sprinkled in. The story grows from there. I write a (usually) chronological first draft that is my rough draft and then I revise in a second draft. When needed, I'll write a third draft with another revision pass before I send it to my editor for a final edit/proofread. I think I need to make a writing process vid, too. Hm.
I'm surprised but we have similar processes. The biggest difference is that I don't switch projects. NEVER EVER! I sit down and write a 1st draft, it might take 6 weeks or so, but I don't touch anything else, I'll hardly even read. I also start knowing the beginning fairly well until the inciting incident, the ending pretty good and the middle is a more muddy. Usually I know the midpoint but not what happens before or after. I use the story circle and I'll fill it out as I go along. I don't consider myself a discovery writer because before I start writing I always sit down and think for about 10 minutes what's going to happen in the next scenes specifically. I don't write anything down, just think about the overall scenes for a few minutes. I think the fact I stick with one novel at a time and concentrate on that is why my 1st drafts are cleaner than yours. I've never had to ditch 90% of my novel, or maybe we just have different styles, who knows, right?
My writing style has evolved a lot but one is clear - I do only one project at a time and I do it hella slow often with huge gaps in between, sometimes even a year or more. It's a downside for a person that does either 0% or does 210% and at that moment writing takes over all my life. Do not recommend. I started writing with no plans, having no expectations to be a writer, I didn't bother with the plot or characters or whatever. It took me several years to start taking it seriously and that required to rewrite the whole thing and try to make something cohesive by created a weak excuse for an outline (idea for an events for each day since the story was limited in time). I was writing and editing it in parallel. Other writers say it's a bad idea but at the time I found it hard to continue if something in previous chapters or books didn't fit . It's only recently that I have started to write out of order but even then it's only few chapters apart at most. Another shitty thing about being a slow writer and with taking long pauses is that it becomes very visible how the quality changes throughout the story and it ain't good for the consistency. I was still learning and sometimes ended dropping the story completely thus making it feel like a waste of time even if my skills improved. Though when people ask me what I have written, I usually don' t have anything to show, I'm infamous with that in my NaNo circles, my beta-readers have been waiting for years now. Planing more thoroughly helps me to write more quickly and evenly. At this point in time I perhaps finally have a more solid writing process that I can reliably use in the future. It includes: 1. first notes and ideas for the story and characters and a document with a synopsis to try to pinpoint the mood for the story; 3. an outline, usually for a 1/3 or 1/2 of the story, the ending is vague or non-existent yet. This is also the part for the research and crafting the world, magic, relationship dynamics and so on; 4. doing the 1st draft while filling in the missing parts for the outline, I understand what are some of the stories themes, the ending is starting to shape up and I have an idea how big word-wise the story is gonna end up being and if it's a single story or with several parts (usually several parts and I can't keep myself under 100k either oh boi); 5. since i write slow if everything is going smoothly then i finish the draft, give is a pause and then do the second draft. I work on my drafts thoroughly and the 1st draft even if not perfect, it rather serviceable to begin with, I usually have all the major plot points, characters and so on. If something doesn't work in the 1st draft or I write too slow and the beginning is miserable compared to the latter part, I completely rewrite the story. Most of the plot stays the same, I add more features, work more on the language and at that point it could be called a 2nd draft. 6. 3rd draft includes rereading and fixing the descriptions and language, minor details, since the plot is in a shape i want it to be. When that is done, ideally I give it to beta-readers; 7. with beta-readers feedback I edit what I see fit (my plotting game and pacing is in much higher level than my language so it's usually the latter that I have more to work on) and... it's thus is as far as I've gotten currently. I suppose when the final draft will be done I'll try printing the whole thing out and see how that works, reread the last time and then off to publication. ...and there is hoped to keep this short. Uuugh... I suppose it was nice to write it out for myself too. Cheers from Latvia!
I'm still working on figuring out a process. Your videos have helped me a lot in that regard because I'm trying zero drafts and outlining and a mix of things and although none of it is easy, it actually seems to be working. Right now I'm just trying to get into a better writing routine. I have a small writing notebook, but I think I need to use it more. I spend too much time in my head and don't jot enough down. And I don't know why, because I know that's how I work best...
I've been experimenting with my process lately. Right now I'm writing my zero drafts by hand in notebooks. It's been slower but also feels much more creative and organic. The hard part has been when I want to move scenes around I'm not sure how to rig that.
I'm still sort of figuring out my process. I just got back into writing after stopping for a few years. This is sort of the process I'm going for. 1. Write and finish the story. (Zero draft/draft one) 2. Fix and change anything that needs to be changed in the plot. (Next draft) 3. Work on characters. Make sure they are solid. (Next draft) It's working for me so far, but it might change as I figure out exactly what process is best for me.
