graphic by Peg Ihinger
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
– James Clear, Atomic Habits
I’ve had several requests to talk about systems for writing fiction. The trouble is that a good, workable system is particular, even when it’s “a system for paying my bills every month.” So I’m going to be a bit meta today, and talk about a system for creating a workable system.
The basic method for setting up a system sounds pretty straightforward—figure out what outcome you want, break getting to it down into tiny pieces, set up the tiny pieces so each individual one is easy for you. Then work the system and adapt it as necessary.
The trouble starts there, because “a system” is a repeatable process. And different writers have different processes, and different people frequently go through completely different steps to get to the end result. So my system for writing a book won’t have the same steps as your system, even if they have the same desired outcome and include a lot of the same sections (e.g. plot, characters, dialog, etc.). That’s why there are approximately 3.6 gazillion plotting systems on the internet, all of which work for somebody, but not one of which works for everybody.
One writer may plot by mentally trying out different logical developments in chronological order and nailing down each plot point before moving on. Another may have a vivid idea of a dramatic scene in mid-book or near the end, and therefore sets out key plot points that have to happen to get to that scene, before filling in the gaps. Pantsers often dislike having a plot-plan at all. Some writers need character sheets that cover everything from eye color to childhood trauma; other writers just want a list of names, so that they don’t accidentally call two characters “David.” Some writers do so much advance worldbuilding that their heirs can publish fifteen-plus posthumous books of it (*cough* Tolkein *cough*). Others prefer to leave as much open as possible, so they have room to make up whatever they need when they hit a tricky scene in mid-book. And so on.
So to create a writing system, you need to think objectively about what your process is like. What do you start with? What do you always have trouble with? When and where do you get stuck? What don’t you need to know at the start, but you do need to figure out later? What are the easiest and hardest bits of writing for you? Where do you need a repeatable process (Action scenes? Council scenes? Structure? Character arcs? Plot? Worldbuilding?) and where do things come easily? What are the patterns in your process?
For instance, my personal “start a new book” system (if I wrote it down) would include things like “figure out the backstory” and a bunch of worldbuilding, but it doesn’t include character development beyond names and maybe hair/eye color. That’s because I generally write my way into my characters, so their development happens during the first draft. Somewhere around Chapter 3, “update character notes” would go on my daily or weekly list of regular writing tasks, so I’ll remember that I decided in Chapter 2 that the sidekick is allergic to dogs or whatever. On the other hand, I know two writers whose process starts with cruising the internet for pictures of people who “look like” the characters in their head, and a couple of others who have to have extensive character sheets that include physical and mental traits, traumas, “significant events,” etc. Roger Zelazny’s pre-first-draft character development included writing a fully-developed scene of a significant event in the character’s life that was (deliberately) never included in the eventual book.
You get to a lot of this stuff by thinking about what you did in the past, what worked, and how you got around the stuff that didn’t work (or why you still haven’t gotten past it). You have to be absolutely honest with yourself here, because sometimes the problem isn’t with the writing, it’s with the writer. Someone who has a horror of writing purple prose may always have trouble writing scenes where emotions are running high—not because there’s any real problem with the scene or with writing strong emotions, but because they toss out every vivid description out of fear that it’s “too purple,” and scenes that should be strong and emotional end up falling flat. So their system may need a step for reminding themselves that the purple is all in their head, or that they should write it really purple and then show their beta reader to see if it actually needs to be toned down or not.
Looking back at writing previous books also gives you a chance to realize that you always run into trouble because you left out the villain’s motivation, or because you didn’t work out who was standing where so that the action would make sense. Then you add a step to your process to consider/decide/diagram that thing before it bites you. Even (or especially) if you really hate doing it. Not doing it is what keeps getting you in trouble.
If you’re on your first book, you don’t have information about what worked/didn’t work the last time, so you have two options. You can start with one of the aforementioned gazillion writing systems out there and use it until you figure out which bits you like having, which ones bore you, which ones you hate but that turn out to be really useful, etc. Then you chuck all the boring/useless bits, keep the stuff you find helpful and/or fun, and add new steps as you decide you need them. (This can also work for writers who have written a bunch of books, but who don’t want to boot up their own system completely from scratch. Grab a couple of different plotting/characterization/worldbuilding/idea-development systems and combine just the bits that seem useful, or pick one and throw out the stuff that doesn’t matter or make sense to spend time on.)
Step one for me is often, “What’s something I feel so strongly about that it’ll carry me for the time it takes to write a novel?” (Then, of course, I have to write it so any outrage doesn’t come through. To me, polemics too often tell when they ought to show.)
Knowing what underlies the story generally gives me an opening and an ending as well, not to mention a lot in between.
“Roger Zelazny’s pre-first-draft character development included writing a fully-developed scene of a significant event in the character’s life that was (deliberately) never included in the eventual book.”
That’s an amazing reminder that you can’t diagnose a writer’s process from the finished product, because I’d have said that _Nine Princes in Amber_ was the pantsiest of all pantser stories–it starts with the main character waking up and literally trying to figure out who he is and how he got there, so I’d kind of assumed the author didn’t know!
“Why would I want to write the book, if I knew what was going to happen?”
―Roger Zelazny
I like Kevin’s principle — what I feel strongly enough about to carry me through the work of writing a story — but what I feel strongly enough usually isn’t outrage. It’s more likely to be admiration, or sympathy, or the vindication of some good.
I suppose I should have specified “the work of a novel.”
I’ve written quite a few mood pieces – spookiness, happy tears – but those end up being short stories. A mood isn’t enough to hold me for however long a novel’s going to take me.
But Rick’s approach sounds a happier one. And if a mood is enough to carry someone, by all means go for it!
Jot notes.
Start an outline. Once I needed the opening scene for that, but now I just plug things into the right relative time and put in notes that I need to fill in the scenes. Try to judge whether this story needs only a list of events outline, or a skeleton to ensure that it’s not just one thing after other but has major turning points.
Complete the outline so there is an actual plot that will get to an end and not peter out.
Start the first draft. Or second draft if you call the outline a really rough draft.
Create whole world, bouncing between premise, societal response to setting, character response to setting and society, then societal response to that
Identify setting or societal event or character incident that’s storyable
Slice off relevant details
Write that
This is terribly inefficient. Try not to be me. But since I passively spin up worlds nonstop, I actually have enough stories now to take 10 lifetimes to write, so it mostly works out.
Come up with a Cool Idea or three (the easy part). Bang my head against the wall trying to devise a Plot around the Cool Ideas. It can be a highly skeletal plot, but it has to be a complete one, with a Beginning, Middle, AND Ending.
Start a list of Names, often early in the Cool Idea phase and definitely by the start of the head banging phase. Because Names are Magic. I need actual Names. Placeholder names do NOT work for me.
Set the Cool Ideas aside for “later” if the head banging obviously fails to produce a Plot.
If the head banging does appear to produce a Plot, begin writing the first draft. Alternate between writing the draft and noodling/outlining/midwriting to add more bones to the Plot skeleton. Bang my head against the wall some more if (as frequently happens) the Plot I thought I had turns out to be unworkable or not actually a complete plot, and I need to fix this somehow.
Partway through the first draft, stop and do a revision pass from the beginning of the draft to where I left off. Sometimes I’ll need to do this twice. Occasionally more than twice.
Engage in (usually) lesser struggles as I try to complete the fitting of additional Plot bones into the Plot skeleton.
Do swathes of world-building all along. If it’s a new setting, a major chunk of world-building happens during the Cool Idea and List of Names phase. If it’s an existing setting, I review and add to my previous notes on the setting.
Once I have a complete draft in hand, do one or more revision passes. This not head-banging Hard for me, merely tedious. Very very tedious.
Finally, produce a copy of the work that’s formatted for sending out, along with any incidental writing that needs to be sent out with it.
Get the urge to write something.
Write enough to know whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or something else.
Describe some interesting event involving characters that are somehow magically fully developed.
Figure out where in the storyline this event takes place.
Write some other scenes/events and figure out where they go.
Write an opening scene.
Start to infill/stitch together the scenes that seem to be working/fit with what the story seems to be about.
Keep writing with no notion whatsoever of a resolution and hope one congeals out of the ether.
Trust the process.
If you lose faith in the process, stop writing for ten years or more.
Get an idea for a scene and write that scene. If it seems to lead to other scenes, write those too. Shuffle them a bit if they work better in a different order; write interstitial material in bursts to link the scenes, which otherwise are often somewhat disconnected.
This has only led directly to finished stories on a few occasions. Usually I hit a wall where there’s something I don’t know that I really need to know. I may be able to figure it out by a long period of scribbling notes, brainstorming, and stewing; if I can’t, I’m done.
Then another wall when it needs an ending. Back to note scribbling.
About 2/3 of the things I start do not get finished, mostly dying at the First Veil but sometimes the Second. (Why *did* the maze-monster in the lake create my protagonist? What was she supposed to do for it? She doesn’t know–if she knew, I could probably figure it out–and so far all suggestions have come up dry. Without that it seems quite impossible to come up with an ending.)
I do not love this process, but it occasionally generates a whole novel. (Never anything shorter.) I think what I really need is a way to identify the critical gaps earlier, and fill them in before so much of the story sets up that nothing I invent will fit anymore. I fear the lake-monster story has gone that way. I should not have written 3/4 of it without finding out what the lake-monster wants.
I used to write the scenes much more out of order, and with much less interstitial tissue already present: then there would be a long “threading beads onto string” phase. I think the current process is a bit better. (The previous one came out of writing about RPGs and is not so good for newly invented stuff.)