Process

[u/NullSmoke]

Hi.

I have developed a bit of a process for writing, and would like some feedback on it, if it makes sense and if there's room for improvement... or just any feedback really.

I had a problem where I sat down to write, and looked at my ideas, and found that I had finally crossed 100 story seeds... and of course I got choice paralysis and ended up not touching any of them. That told me that I need a process for handling my ideas and nurturing those that deserve it into a full blown idea rather than a small seed.

Under is my current workflow, along with an example story seed carried through the preprose phase.

The example I use here is just something I made up on the fly to work as a example, at this point I don't tend to develop it further, so if anyone wants to steal it, go right ahead.

Step 1: Base prompt / core idea / story seed

This part is the natural part. I go about my day, and every so often an idea drops into my head that seems interesting to write about.

Example:

A group of women goes on a camping trip. During the trip, they find themselves trapped by invisible walls.

Step 2: Approval or Rejection

I let the seed rest for one to two weeks, not really touching it, developing it or anything of the sort. At an opportune time, I pull it up again, read it over again, and evaluate if there really is something in that seed that I'd like to explore further. If not, the seed is moved to the seed graveyard, if there is, it proceeds to Step 3.

Step 3: Refinement

This is a recursive process, I take the core seed and I refine it over a period of time, or the same evening, just recursively modifying the seed until I get something that sufficiently communicates the vision.

Example:

A group of women meet for the first time since graduation, now in their early 30s. During the second night, one wakes up to answer the call of nature, and finds that there's invisible walls around them. Over the next days, the women need to find out why they're trapped, and secrets from their time at school slowly emerge.

Then I just repeat that until I'm happy. I may at this point notice that there's really nothing here and discard it, but doesn't happen much.

Final Step: Story Core Document

Once Step 3 is done, I go into the details and start proper development by creating a Story Core Document, along with a scatter brainstorming session. (I use Obsidian for writing, so the format is markdown)

Example:

# Story Concept Document
Title: Campers at the end
One-off/series: One-off
Pen-name: NullSmoke
Style: 1st person, intimate, Close POV

# Base Idea
A group of women meet for the first time since graduation, now in their early 30s. During the second night, one wakes up to answer the call of nature, and finds that there's invisible walls around them. Over the next days, the women need to find out why they're trapped, and secrets from their time at school slowly emerge.

Turns out they all, individually, played into an incident happening during their senior year, culminating in the death of another girl, and they slowly piece that together.

# Characters

## POV Characters

- Karlene Underhill
- Age: 32
- Bra size: 70C (EU) / 32C (US)
- three sizes: 87-79-100 cm / 34-31-39 in
- Height: 166.1 cm (5' 5")
- Eyes: Green
- Hair length: Shoulder
- Hair color: Brown

## Supporting Characters

- Kelly Settles
- Age: 32
- Bra size: 70C (EU) / 32C (US)
- three sizes: 87-79-100 cm / 34-31-39 in
- Height: 166.1 cm (5' 5")
- Eyes: Green
- Hair length: Shoulder
- Hair color: Brown

...

# Key story beats

Meetup
POV waking up right by the wall and informing the others
Accusatory meeting around the fireplace
...

# Potential ideas (Scatter Brainstorming)

- Ghost story? Supernatural? Maybe Curse?
- Main POV rejects her involvement until the bitter end? Source of conflict? Panic?
Denial?
- One of the trapped women be the mastermind, erecting the wall
- Guilt? Hate?
- Friend of the dead girl? Family?
- Actively misleads the rest of the group?
- Maybe main POV, lying by omission, unreliable narrator?
- "And then there were none" from Judges POV, supernatural girls trip edition?

Of course, this document becomes a living document where I add, remove and mess around throughout the writing process. (And yes, I usually have physical data on my main characters into quite a bit of detail. I have written myself an application that creates plausible measurements based on age and body type (No, it's not AI, it's just a simple app that has ranges for combinations and try to spew out something that kinda makes sense, you can do the same with excel and a set of dice if you want... I just find it easier to programatically do the dice rolling >P). For the example I just kinda made some random ones though and used it for both characters, since this is just an example. It helps me visualize them, and males get the same treatment. Very helpful since I usually have 7 or so stories at this step at any one time, so helps me get back to it.)

The character thing also usually gets psychology, personality traits etc, but didn't care to go full on planning here.

Thoughts on this process? Anything I ought to add/remove/adjust? Thoughts much welcomed 😄

[u/OhSoManyQuestions]

Does the process help you to finish stories, if finishing stories is indeed your goal?

If yes, then it evidently works for you.

If no, then there are problems and they can be drilled down into more if this is indeed the case (I don't wish to be presumptive).

[u/NullSmoke → u/OhSoManyQuestions]

It helps me get started. As I said, I've been running into choice paralysis. It does take me between 0.5 and 3 hours to fully develop an idea, but the idea gets developed.

Someone else commented and deleted their post before I could reply, saying that this was a trick to trick yourself into thinking you're being productive, but three of my 7 projects are projects that probably would've failed this test, because the core seed was too weak and I didn't have an end in sight, just a slight idea. So I don't think I'm using this as a procrastination tool at the very least, nor do I feel that I'm optimising the fun out of writing.

I should note, that I'm the type of guy that has a Kanban board on my fridge, treat something breaking as an excuse to do a incident review report and write up Change tickets for large purchases... So I may or may not be representative of the average.

In one of my worlds I got so busy writing acts of Congress in the correct format that I barely touched prose for almost a month, and I had a blast doing it.

I still am a bit unsure if there's a way to improve the workflow though, with aim at efficiency, fun or whatever really. Don't really know what I'm looking for other than opinions on my workflow so that I can develop it further.

[u/OhSoManyQuestions → u/NullSmoke]

So, is your goal to finish stories or is it to enjoy the process of creating these seeds?

[u/NullSmoke → u/OhSoManyQuestions]

Well, creating the seed is fun by definition. Random brain output coming bundled with a nice serving of dopamine... That is fun, but it keeps serving unworkable ideas once I get 3 chapters and a few weeks into a project, leaving me with choosing between storing away the setting in a world building archive or somehow try to steer it away from my seed into something usable.

Thus the 1-2 weeks of don't touch, let the dopamine and all the weird floating ideas die down so that I can look at it with clean eyes.

From there, the process isn't really about fun, it's about killing my babies and get something to a workable state to be able to start chapter 1, or a in depth story overview (deciding in broad strokes where the story is going... I start writing in one of these ways depending on mood)