Writing Methods

If you listen to actors talking about how they get into their roles, you’ll hear things like,
‘method actor’, ‘living the role’, ‘be yourself’ and much more. Writers are not much different because we have our own ways to create the stories we write.

I remember my astonishment when I found that Steven King was what we writers call a ‘panters’. He sits down at his computer – he started with an old typewriter – and with a scene, a character, a thought, he starts a book, with no idea where he’s going. In other words, he writers ‘by the seat of his pants’. Sherrilyn Kenyon does the same.

Then, there are authors like me. A detailed outline and character interview sheets need to be filled out, and my research completed. Even though sometimes my characters take me in another direction, I start with a detailed road map. I write from an outline.

There are combinations of the two. A good friend, and author of dozens of books, always has a beginning and an end, but as she begins she doesn’t have any idea how she’ll get to the final pages of her novel. It works for her.

If you spend time on line, researching the various writing methods, an example would be the classic “W” plot, or the “snowflake” model, I suspect you’d be stunned at how almost every writer has his or her unique why to go from the beginning to the end of a story. As each book, each author is different, so also is the method that individual uses to get the words on paper. All of this verbiage leads to one important point – there is no perfect way to write a book.