Take Notes On Your Story

Here's one big secret of how I do my fiction writing: before I ever start writing the actual thing, I take notes. I have a special notebook just for this purpose, and when it's time to start a new story I take it out and begin a new page. This process begins after I've spent a day or two thinking about what I want to write about without writing anything down. Now in my notebook I begin by writing a line or two about my main character. I might write "a middle-aged woman whose son has just died." Getting those words on the page enable me to start scribbling notes about where the story might go. I'll list other characters that are important, as well as a line or two about the mood of the story that I want to convey or a theme that I'm interested in exploring. All of this stuff is immensely helpful for getting a feel of the kind of work I'm eventually going to create.

After the jump: asking questions of myself.

Other than getting general feelings down, I also tentatively map out a few things. Whenever I get an idea for a scene that could be fruitful, I write SCENE in caps and then a brief description of what needs to happen in this scene. This is similar to what I heard Christopher Guest does when mapping out his brilliant improv comedies such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. He will outline the bare bones of what needs to happen in a particular scene to move the story forward. Then he lets his actors go and they improvise their way to the scene's conclusion. In the same way, I have this very sparse guide of what needs to happen in a scene, but when I get to actually writing it, it could happen in any manner of ways.

In addition to sketching out a few scenes in that way, I also ask myself questions about potential problems of the story. For example, I'll write: "QUESTION: Why does she stay in the town so long? or QUESTION: Doesn't he get some sort of financial compensation?" These sorts of questions, either practical or related to how the story goes, will remind me to keep the problem in mind and either do some research to clear it up or think of a way to resolve it in the story.

With these notes, usually taking up only one page of a small notebook, I'm ready to begin actually writing my story. One important thing to remember is that in these notes, I never write down how the story ends. It's up to me to get there in the actual writing process, and not to plan ahead. The notes are not set in stone and it's often interesting to look back at the notes afterward and see how far my finished story diverged from my original ideas. No matter how different they are, it's still a useful brainstorming tool and a great way to prepare yourself for the task of writing a story.

Comments

[Ann Douglas]

I like to purposely restrict my writing to let the ideas build up in my head. Then, when I finally feel like I really have a good one, I start writing. It's crazy how easy it is to write when I do this, it seems to gush out on paper and the ideas start to multiply.

I started doing this because, like you, I had a notebook that I jotted my ideas down in, but soon I found myself waking up in the middle of the might and scratching out story ideas. As you can guess, I wasn't getting enough sleep to actually have the discipline to finish what I started.

Isn't that the hardest part of being a writer, discipline?

[Blair]

I know what you mean, Ann! Sometimes I worry that I'm planning too much before the actual writing process and I should just let the writing flow more naturally. When I feel worried, I usually take a step back and try to do some spontaneous writing without note-taking beforehand.

And you're absolutely right, discipline is totally crucial but one of the hardest aspects of becoming a serious writer. I'm thinking about a post just about writing discipline, so stay tuned! Thanks for your comment.