Think Ink: by Rose B. Fischer!

~ eclecticalli

Hey guys! This is Rose B. Fischer. You might know me from over on my blog of the same name. If not, it’s nice to meet you!

Last year, I blogged through an experiment in designing a drafting and revision process that works better for me than what I have been doing for. The blog series was known as Think Ink. This year, I’m doing another round of Think Ink focused on getting all my notes and research into a working order!  Alli invited me to share my posts here with you, so here I am.

I do a fair amount of pre-writing before I start a story. Most of it is actually in prose form rather than outlining and planning, though I do have an outlining system. I operate best when I work with both pantser and plotter methods.

The system I’ve been been using goes like this:

  • Get an idea.  Usually my ideas start as a bunch of random scenes that pop into my head about characters I’ve never met, or they start as a dream.  On rare occasions, I’ll just get an idea for a character, ponder for a few minutes, and have random scenes and imagery pop into my head.
  • Write Random scenes until I get a feel for the characters and situations, or alternately, roleplay my characters with a small group of friends.
  • Do a brain dump of everything I know, then analyze characters and world to see what I want to keep, change, or throw out.
  • Come up with a plot, then cycle back and forth between writing, plotting, and brain dumping out everything I’ve learned about the world.
  • Start having a meltdown because I have too many brain dumps and not enough organization of all my ideas, create a structured worldbuilding document in Word, then get frustrated because it’s too hard to keep updated.

So, clearly I need to find a better method of tracking and updating my notes.  I’ve tried lots and lots of things, including The Brain, keeping separate tabbed binders, notecards, keeping collections of documents on a private blog so everything can have hyperlinks to relevant stuff, and Trello.  None really do what I need them to do.

This time I’m experimenting with Scrivener, and this blog series will document the process. I’ll be here On the first and third Thursdays of every month.  The off-weeks I’ll actually be posting my worldbuilding notes on my blog for reference, so if this interests you, take a look.

Like what you see here?

Visit rosebfischer.com for more!

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Published by eclecticalli

I am finding my way on the meandering, twisting path of life, constantly surprised by what’s around the next bend. Working to embrace and face the challenges inherent with following your dreams, and writing the journey. A writer and dreamer, historian and theologian, academic and fantasy-world-creator, genealogist and gluten-free baker, crafter and reader, poet and life-long learner, MLIS student constantly questioning and occasionally irreverent. Eclectic Alli is my personal blog, with reflections on writing, life, theology, history, or whatever may catch my thoughts. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram round out my online presence, and I try to do little bits different with each of them.

5 thoughts on “Think Ink: by Rose B. Fischer!”

  2. Wow. Your writing process sounds so much like mine that it’s scary. Main difference is that I don’t usually write any scenes with the characters before I start writing the book; I play through them in my head, but I don’t write them down.

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    1. Cool. I do both, depending on…i don’t know. Sometimes I write them and sometimes I see/hear them clearly enough I don’t need to. Anyway! Excited to meet a kindred spirit writer!

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  3. Pingback: Think Ink! Guest Series by Rose B. Fischer | Eclectic Alli
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