Today we take a look at the premeditator! Writers are a lot like shoppers, and the writing process is a hell of a lot like shopping. Your writing process says a lot about how and what you will write, and it greatly influences your voice. The beauty here is that there is no right or wrong as long as you write in your way. Try to write like someone else, and you will fail. Note: many of us have more than one style influencing us!
A few days ago, I graced you with my intellectual story about salt and pepper shakers (Remember: Mr. Muscles). I imparted the story about my partner refusing to let me buy the most amazing salt and pepper shaker in the galaxy. Revenge was served briefly afterward when my cousin bought me these lovely salt and pepper shakers.
My partner lies somewhere between the premeditator and the stingy shopper (tomorrow’s writing style). That man will spend weeks planning a purchase, shopping around online, reading up on what he’s planning on buying, and quizzing friends. He hates spending money. I swear he’s the lovechild of Scrooge and Spock. He’s constantly looking at me, raising one eyebrow and murmuring “I find that highly illogical.” If he were a writer, he would definitely have a meticulous and thorough outline for his story.
The Premeditator
If you are a premeditator, then you have a plan for your novel well before you start writing. Premeditators will spend a considerable amount of time organizing, pre-writing, structuring, researching, and outlining their story. Often, the premeditator does not end up with a ton of drafts. They put so much effort into getting it right the first time that they don’t have to do a lot of editing.
Pros: Falling into the “sentimental” classification of writing (see Orhan Pamuk’s book, The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist for more on this), the premeditator puts a tremendous amount of thought into the method and techniques used to create the story. Faulkner is an excellent example of the kind of forethought that goes into his writing process. In The Sound and The Fury he is careful to depict the novel as accurately as possible through his narrators and the structure varies differently as the POV moves from one character to the next.
Cons: Improvision can be tough for the premeditator. When they get stuck, they really get stuck. Sometimes the deliberateness with which they write can make their story sound artificial and hollow, so they need to be careful not to be too rigid. Also, their writing process takes quite a bit of time and effort. I had a friend in graduate school who would spend hours just searching for the right word. Need some inspiration? Try out Eliot’s The Hollow Men or check out Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds”.
Tips:
- Spend some time refining your process and eliminating the pieces that don’t contribute to your writing. Do you benefit from a character sketch? Do you find an outline essential? Do you diagram each scene before writing it? Find what works, ditch what doesn’t.
- Try not to get stuck on words/structure/stuff you can go back and edit later. Create a tag for your writing so that you can easily find those parts, and then let it go and keep writing (breathing exercises might help with this).
- There are some great worksheets and templates for diagraming, organizing and planning. Here are a couple of sites to get you started:
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