Writing Methods.

I'm doing an OU course - Start Writing Fiction. I signed up because I thought my writing could use a bit of polish and maybe there were some techniques and tips that would work for me and help me improve. I'm always up for looking at new ways of doing things.

So, the course started and the writing exercises are forced, stilted. I can do them and I'm getting good feedback for each piece. There's a three part assignment due at the end of the month and I've done the first part already. Might have a crack at the second part later today.

Anyway, what the course is showing me is that I write in a very fluid and organic way. I don't plan, I have a rough idea and a couple of main characters and let it write itself. Often it doesn't work and I get to 20 or 30 thousand words and give up. But sometimes it is the most wonderful thing and the story evolves by itself and the characters are real and say and do things completely unexpected - then I have to work out where it's going because it's way off the original idea.

Take The Portal Between for example. I started that with the scene where Kate wakes up in bed to find Hayley has snuck in and fallen asleep. I was listening to Isobel by Dido and had the line about a car being found by a tree running round my head. So I had the original idea that someone had gone missing for a while, couple of years probably and then comes back. But how do they come back? Why? When? Where have they been? What happened to the family and friends left behind? So I started working along those lines and it flowed, it just sort of grew all by itself like watching a film and making notes. Then I needed someone to watch Kate's kids and I made up Lily.

Lily took over the whole story and changed its direction completely, opening up new possibilities and new ideas. I love Lily!

More about how, when and why I write later.....