Novels & Short Stories Forum Organize and Revise

Everyone has their own way of organizing their stories .How do you? What's your writing process like.

For my writing organization, all I do is list ideas about fantasy creatures and do an Eenie Menie Minie Moe thing. Then once I have the idea, I list names from the internet or from my mind. After I list the names, I just start to write about whatever comes to mind.       It's a fast and good way to start writing to me. I just have a great imagination and fantasy mind.

I find a character in my mind, sometimes from a dream or chance encounter with someone I've bumped into at a bar, a show, or a book store.  I watch people, study what they do and the way they move through life.  If they look interesting, I start to make up a world in which they’d live, how they’d live their lives if they were suddenly thrust into outer space and held hostage by giant worms… whatever pops up in my head.  Then, if I find myself really wanting to know what they’d do next I write a little story about them.       I start with something small, always a tiny spark of an idea, and then I write like crazy until it either fizzles out and turns into nothing or breeds a whole new world full of ideas and new lives. If the latter happens then I just keep on writing, letting the story lead me where it wants to go.   I don’t really organize as such. I just jump in the deep end head first and pray I can swim.

Most of my stories tend to either start with a dream or have one in them and then I just sort of wing it from there. If it doesn't make since than I go back and fix it. Ash to Ash is the first book ive ever actually brain stormed for lol

Good question.
I like to variate my writing and challenge myself so I don't become complacent. I also like to alter my writing style.

For my novel, Familiarity Breaks my story idea never had to be planned in advance. I knew how it would begin and how it would end. So I wrote in a notebook the journey/butterfly effect and typed it up. I had to plan out the ending. Two characters Sheridon and Eliza meet each other, become friends and become really close. I had to plan their relationship. I'll upload a scanned picture of my notebook here on Friday. You'll want to see it.

For Key To The House, each chapter is 3 pages of A4, and I wrote it and typed it up. The first page is descriptive narrative to fill the reader in on something. The last two pages is where the action happens, and a change of events happens on the final page. The final sentence of each chapter says in a new paragraph That was xxx, a day of yyy.

For my 2 novel ideas I have yet to write, I will have to plan each chapter in advance.

For The Stupid One, which is a collection of fictious journal entries, I use DTP software like Microsoft Publisher, Quark Xpress, or Adobe Indesign, and I choose how many pages of A4 I want, and I create text boxes. I then write my story (journal entry) to fill the text boxes, and once done, I go over it again to improve it. I make the text boxes autoflow/link to the next box.

For my other stories I just write how I normally write. Have an storyline, and write it out on paper before typing it up. Nothing special.