I've heard several writers discuss the difference between organic and mechanical writing. Some people write in the mechanical way, which is to come up with a firm outline, draw out each chapter, know every plot point from beginning to end of story.
Then there's organic. You have a lose idea for what you want to have happen in your story and then you just write and see what happens.
My style, I've decided, is cyborg. I usually start off with the genre I want, then create the character I want to tell the story through. After that I start to piece together what I want to happen in the story, where I want to begin, and basically how I want to end. I create an outline once I get enough pieced together on scratch paper (I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night when I've gotten a good idea) then start to fill it in as I can. Eventually I just start writing, letting the story and the characters fill in as I go.
So, the outline is the mechanical skeleton of the story, and the organic writing is the flesh. That makes me a cyborg. We'll see if it actually works.
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3 comments:
I'm organic then, I guess. I have bits and pieces come to me at random moments. A picture will flash in my head or a conversation of two characters will materialize out of nowhere. But what usually happens, is I jot down things that my characters like or dislike or weird habits they may have that tell me who they are. After I get started, they tell me more about themselves and I figure out where their story goes.
Wow, that sounded extremely hippie, didn't it? :S
Hmmm...maybe I should write a book.
One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, is organic, so I think it's cool. I can barely write my name, so illleave the creative stuff to you, Matt. However, I'm not sure I want to be married to a cyborg. Is that grounds for divorce? You aren't going to go all Terminator on me are you? If so, I'm going to have to kill you and then Will won't have any parents. Think about it before you go crazy and try to kill me, ok?
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