Another author explains how he writes

[someoneyouknow]

David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, took an entire day out to speak to 60 Minutes about how he writes. He gave his five writing tips which are:

1) Make the verb do the work (more on that later)
2) Keep a travel notebook
3) Start your story as late as possible
4) Avoid "fuzzy endings"
5) Start writing by 7:30 AM

Each segment has a short video of him elaborating on each of the above five points.

Now, about that first tip. In the article he talks about keeping an extensive and detailed travel notebook.

"This is the stuff then that I bring back here to this room, masses and masses of it, the memories, the observations, things like color, smell," Cornwell says.

The most important observations, he notes, are his first impressions, when his senses are still shocked by newness and not dulled by experience.

"Get them down on paper and bring them back here," he says, "and then they're at your elbow."​

Which raises the issue: if you're using your senses and need to describe color and smell, it's a might difficult to use a verb to describe the color of a dress or the way a street in the bowels of Bangkok might smell. Perhaps the color might be something like, "It's color reminded him of the roiling foam of waves which smashed against the breakers day and night."

Aside from that personal quibble, it's the usual story of someone who has made their fortune writing about what they know and is offering how they do things to others.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-le-carre-rules-of-writing-from-an-international-best-seller/

 

[SusanJillParker]

I write every day, 7 days a week, from 4:30 am to 11:30 am.

I only write fiction. Everything I write comes from my head.

I've never kept a journal. I've never made an outline. I only write when inspired which is all the time, something that has taken me years to master.

Sometimes, complete stories come to me all at once. Other times, stories don't reveal themselves until I develop the characters. My characters tell me what to write. As long as I develop my characters, I no longer need to write only what I know. My characters share with me what they know.

I never stare at a blank page. I never wonder what I'm going to write. If ever I get stuck, I take my story to bed with me. My last thought before falling asleep is my story. I allow my brain to percolate my story while I'm sleeping. Then, when I awaken, I can't type fast enough before forgetting something.

I always thought that earning my degree in English with minors in creative writing and English literature would make me a better writer. It didn't. Other than to write papers for class, I didn't write a damn thing in college. All I did was read, sometimes as many as four books a week to keep up with my full load of writing classes.

Other than the mechanics and other than proper English grammar, no one can teach anyone how to write. Either you have it or you don't. Either you want to write or you don't.

While forsaking your friends and family, a lonely proposition to make to write every day, writing takes discipline and dedication. Fortunately for me, I'm always in the mood to write. It's a habit now, as if taking a shower, flossing and brushing my teeth, brushing my hair, exercising, and getting dressed, writing is part of my daily routine.

Now, all that I need to think of a story to write is to see a word, a phrase, or a face and I have a story.

 

[Ferax]

I know another writer that strongly advises against flowery language like "It's color reminded him of the roiling foam of waves which smashed against the breakers day and night"

She advises to keep your audience from breaking their emotional place and prevemt them from laughing at your overly poetic prose.

So instead you would go "It's color appeared to him as a frothy blue green. The hints of white mixed in causing him to feel emotion."
Or better yet, leave out the emotion and let the reader fill his in. He's staring at the color and it fascinated him. Why? I don't know, but I am on the edge of my seat to see what he does next!

I know for sure you'd lose me with sea waves breaking day and night. The color of that scene would change with lighting conditions. I think I sprained my eyeballs as it is after reading it.

 

[ChloeTzang]

....Now, all that I need to think of a story to write is to see a word, a phrase, or a face and I have a story.

That's how I get the ideas for some of my stories. A face. An image. A line someone else wrote. A song. Even a name. And you have that image and you start to write and the story just happens because that's what it is without any conscious thought. It's just there in your head as if it happened. it's fascinating comparing how different writers approach writing. There's so many unique ways

 

[NOIRTRASH]

[Personal attacks and trolling prohibited per our Forum Rules]

 

[ChloeTzang]

I like to take a popular TEX story, fix the spelling and grammar, remove all the dum boring stuff, re-state the story in a coherent, cohesive way, add some humor and thrills.

Then shoot someone?

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

And you have that image and you start to write and the story just happens because that's what it is without any conscious thought.

That must be nice. I can't even imagine. Writing for me has always been about trial and error and battling with every sentence and phrase until it's just right and then realizing it won't work with the paragraph above it and rewriting that. I guess that's why ChloeTzang stories are so much longer than mine.

 

[SusanJillParker]

That must be nice. I can't even imagine. Writing for me has always been about trial and error and battling with every sentence and phrase until it's just right and then realizing it won't work with the paragraph above it and rewriting that. I guess that's why ChloeTzang stories are so much longer than mine.

Don't be discouraged. Everyone has their own way of writing. Everyone has their own style and their own approach to writing. What works for me, may not work for you.

I can't write unless I'm drinking, hot, black Starbucks, French Roast coffee while sitting in my Herman Miller Aeron chair but that's just me. I don't take writing seriously in the way that others do. Writing is my passion and not my living. I could never write for a publisher who wanted me to write this or that. I'd rather be free to write whatever I want.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was happy if he wrote one, perfectly constructed sentence in a day.

Moreover, we're not writing for the Harvard Review, Atlantic Journal, or the New Yorker, we're writing erotica or pornography for fun. Writing should be more fun than painful. Unfortunately, oftentimes writing is more painful than it is fun.

Just go with the flow and enjoy yourself. The more you write, the better writer you'll be. You're already way ahead of the masses who don't read or write anything once they graduated high school.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Then shoot someone?

In my latest people get hanged, beaten with black-jacks, beaten by fists, and obly one gets shot in the head,

 

[ChloeTzang]

That must be nice. I can't even imagine. Writing for me has always been about trial and error and battling with every sentence and phrase until it's just right and then realizing it won't work with the paragraph above it and rewriting that. I guess that's why ChloeTzang stories are so much longer than mine.

Susan's right, it's whatever works for you. I'm working myself to improve my plotting (as in, actually have a plot as opposed to an idea) for novel sized stories. I'm not at all organized and when I write I'm all over the story writing the start, the end, bits in between and the joint them up and there's a lot of mistakes and repetition that creeps in. So that's another problem for me to work on. I try and focus on one or two improvements at a time.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

F. Scott Fitzgerald was happy if he wrote one, perfectly constructed sentence in a day.

Thanks for the encouragement Susan. That actually sounds much closer to my process. The best description I've seen for the way I write is Kurt Vonnegut's comparison of swoopers and bashers. I'm definitely a swooper.

'm not at all organized and when I write I'm all over the story writing the start, the end, bits in between and the joint them up and there's a lot of mistakes and repetition that creeps in.

Now that I can relate to, Chloe.