For a while now I''ve been thinking about the process a writer must go through to "design and implement" a relatively long novel. I ended up breaking up the process into a number of distinct pieces I will describe below. Some pieces seem relatively simple (to me), others relatively complex. I don''t suppose this process works for everyone and I am interested in hearing your opinions about particular pieces and the whole process in general. 1. Theme accumulation. This seems like the simplest part of the entire journey. Before writing a novel I would want to come up with a list of themes the story will explore. A few examples would be "why does god let bad things happen to good people" and "why does a relationship between man and woman often becomes a burden after a certain time". I don''t know about others, but to me it is impossible to come up with a diverse and interesting list in one sitting. In one month, however, I could come up with more themes I could ever hope to explore. Going out and breathing some fresh air might lead me to an idea. Seeing sunset/sunrise, going to a new restaurant/club/car, meeting a new person, seeing a number of plays on different topics, going to neighborhoods of my city I''ve never been to, travelling to a different city for a while, changing a setting (urban/rural) are some ways that should lead to interesting and diverse ideas. If you happen to pass by Amsterdam, drugs seem to be an excellent option 2. Research. Since there''s nothing new under the sun every theme you could possibly come up with has been discussed to death. Ancient greeks seemed to have discussed everything (most of the stuff our founding fathers have been talking about is redundant, the greeks had much more exhaustive discussions about democracy ). I believe researching what''s already been said is an excellent way to improve your future novel. One reason for this is that a thousand year old discussion may very well pass as new to modern generations. Another is that researching will give you ideas about the theme you never thought of. I once made a "test run" and for every theme I came up with I found at least ten primary sources, dozens of secondary sources and hundreds of fiction books that deal with the theme in question. Philosophy books are always a great place to look. My conclusion was that for every theme it''s a good idea to read two-three opposing primary sources from every age (ancient greece, enlightment, modern, nordic, etc.) which would add up to about 10-15 books, then at least one secondary source for each of the primary sources and perhaps one or two really good fiction books that explore the theme. The research stage should take an enormous amount of time but should provide good returns in terms of your understanding of the themes and ideas. 3. Preliminary character design. This is *relatively* easy and seems to naturally develop from the list of themes and opposing views on each theme provided by the research stage. Different characters should represent different views and allow for a development of the story to serve the exploration of themes. This is of course preliminary as characters must evolve with the story. This stage should provide a starting point for story design. 4. Architecturing the story. To me this is one of the hardest parts of the overall process. Preliminary characters provide a starting point, but how do you go about creating a thrilling page turner that is instrumental in exploring the themes? Perhaps studying story forging techniques? Reading a lot of fiction books and getting a feel for the stories? Stealing story lines and techniques from old classics like The Bible and The Song of Roland? To me this is black magic. 5. Putting the damned thing into words. This is relatively complex but for prose it''s more of a science than black magic above At this point I am not even considering this stage, hence I have little to say about it. This is is a big "Part II" while the four points above are "Part I". For now I''d like to limit the discussion to Part I, if possible.

quote:Original post by CoffeeMug
For a while now I''ve been thinking about the process a writer must go through to "design and implement" a relatively long novel.

Hmm, well since this is the process I''ve been going through for the last three or four months, maybe I''ll have some insight into the question, and maybe thinking about it will actually help me with my novel design.

quote:
I ended up breaking up the process into a number of distinct pieces I will describe below. Some pieces seem relatively simple (to me), others relatively complex. I don''t suppose this process works for everyone and I am interested in hearing your opinions about particular pieces and the whole process in general.

1. Theme accumulation.
This seems like the simplest part of the entire journey. Before writing a novel I would want to come up with a list of themes the story will explore. A few examples would be "why does god let bad things happen to good people" and "why does a relationship between man and woman often becomes a burden after a certain time". I don''t know about others, but to me it is impossible to come up with a diverse and interesting list in one sitting. In one month, however, I could come up with more themes I could ever hope to explore. Going out and breathing some fresh air might lead me to an idea. Seeing sunset/sunrise, going to a new restaurant/club/car, meeting a new person, seeing a number of plays on different topics, going to neighborhoods of my city I''ve never been to, travelling to a different city for a while, changing a setting (urban/rural) are some ways that should lead to interesting and diverse ideas. If you happen to pass by Amsterdam, drugs seem to be an excellent option

I think I would agree that for me theme is also the easiest part (along with character) but I have met writers who find theme fairly difficult because they are more concrete and less abstract thinkers, or people who thing in terms of action (plot) rather than characters'' thoughts and emotions.

If the area of theme holds any difficulties for me, it is finding a collection of themes that I feel strongly enought to write a whole damn book about.

Hmm, lets see if I can list the themes that are involved in my current novel project. (Working title is _Gained in Translation_, btw.)

So, themes, or rather theme-clusters:
1) Slavery, ownership, responsibilities of these, dominance, submission, orders, military and patriarchial hierarchy, second-class citizens and outcastes, tyrants and other people with absurd amounts of authority, and the ethics of all of the above.
2) People with different skills and temperments working together; humorous conflicts re egos and preconceptions, finding a balance, the gestalt phenomenon that the people cooperating are more powerful/resourcesful/successful than any of them would be alone, different kinds of love and how they hold a group together, jealousy, creating family and holding it together against outside pressures.
3) Management/manipulation/brainwashing/persuasion/charm; the techniques and ethics of using this skill, especially using it to counter patriarchial/military/tyrannical power. Also the central role of this power in the phenomenon of creating family.
4) Similarly, the power of the sharp tongue and the strategic mind, as used to counter ditto ditto. The problem that this power tends to socially isolate those who use it.

quote:
2. Research.
Since there''s nothing new under the sun every theme you could possibly come up with has been discussed to death. Ancient greeks seemed to have discussed everything (most of the stuff our founding fathers have been talking about is redundant, the greeks had much more exhaustive discussions about democracy ). I believe researching what''s already been said is an excellent way to improve your future novel. One reason for this is that a thousand year old discussion may very well pass as new to modern generations. Another is that researching will give you ideas about the theme you never thought of. I once made a "test run" and for every theme I came up with I found at least ten primary sources, dozens of secondary sources and hundreds of fiction books that deal with the theme in question. Philosophy books are always a great place to look. My conclusion was that for every theme it''s a good idea to read two-three opposing primary sources from every age (ancient greece, enlightment, modern, nordic, etc.) which would add up to about 10-15 books, then at least one secondary source for each of the primary sources and perhaps one or two really good fiction books that explore the theme. The research stage should take an enormous amount of time but should provide good returns in terms of your understanding of the themes and ideas.

I just read several books on how to write romance novels and several on the military mindset and the social programming aspects of bootcamp and other military training.

quote:
3. Preliminary character design.
This is *relatively* easy and seems to naturally develop from the list of themes and opposing views on each theme provided by the research stage. Different characters should represent different views and allow for a development of the story to serve the exploration of themes. This is of course preliminary as characters must evolve with the story. This stage should provide a starting point for story design.

I find that this is actually two different processes, one for primary characters and the other for secondary characters. Primary characters are most likely to come to me as a fascination with someone else''s character (usually not a vuewpoint character but instead a more mysterious one like a villain or secondary character). Pretty much I know I''ll be happy to spend page after page writing the same character if I''m already obsessed with curiosity about how their mind works. The most difficult part for me is finalizing the smaller details of the primary characters, like what their interests and special abilities are, and their family and personal history. I think I find these the most difficult decisions because they all matter enough that you have to think about them, but not enough that the answer is ovbious or will come to you in a burst of inspiration. And then, they tend to be circularly dependenant on each other.

But basically, this is the area I am the closest to finished with, because I know who my three main characters are, as well as the first secondary character, and more-or-less how they all percieve and react to each other, and how their relationships should mature over the course of the story.

quote:
4. Architecturing the story.
To me this is one of the hardest parts of the overall process. Preliminary characters provide a starting point, but how do you go about creating a thrilling page turner that is instrumental in exploring the themes? Perhaps studying story forging techniques? Reading a lot of fiction books and getting a feel for the stories? Stealing story lines and techniques from old classics like The Bible and The Song of Roland? To me this is black magic.

I would call this plotting, and this is also the most difficult part for me, although I have met people who are natural-born plotters. They tend to be lousy at either character or atmosphere though, so I''m not _too_ jealous of them. This is what I''ve been more-or-less stuck on since July. I know I want to write a romance novel, so one of the things I found very helpful to do was to make a list of all the romantic/sexy/lonely/relationship-angsty moments I''d thought of, and then try to cram these into some sort of chronological order. I know I want a happy ending that will be dependant on my theme number two (different people cooperating to accomplish something great together when they couldn''t do it alone) but darned if I know exactly what that climax should be. I''m pretty sure I want a military academy in there somewhere, but I''m having a hard time placing it because logically the bootcamp part should happen about a year before the rest of the story starts and the characters meet, but in a romance novel you have to introduce a love interest by at least chapter two and many do it in the very first sentence. I can''t decide whether two of the characters should have a failed relationship in their past, or whether they should be meeting for the first time. I can''t decide what one of the character''s job''s is, and another character''s name is. o_O I did the thing where you put all your ideas on notecards and then rearrange them, and that was somewhat helpful, but not a breakthrough. I keep a notebook where I jot down all my ideas, read them over, and try to combine the best ones, but some of them are stubornly refusing to be combined. I tell my sister and my roommate about my ideas; my sister at least is encouraging, if not terribly helpful, and my roommate, not liking the type of story I want to write, has been sufficiently discouraging that I quit telling him much of anything, and that arrangement is much better for my motivation and self-esteem, if not for my relationship with him.

As I see it the plot of my story myst be built around the changing relationships between the three main characters. I know where each relationship is when the two characters first meet, what general stages it passes through, and where it has settled by the end of the story. The problem is to take these three evolutions and overlay them on top of each other in some kind of logical chronological way. Should character A meet character B first, or character C first? Should character A get sexually involved with character B before or after character B meets character C, and should character C find out about ththe relationship or should it be a secret? Questions, questions, and no good answers.

quote:
5. Putting the damned thing into words.
This is relatively complex but for prose it''s more of a science than black magic above At this point I am not even considering this stage, hence I have little to say about it. This is is a big "Part II" while the four points above are "Part I". For now I''d like to limit the discussion to Part I, if possible.

Err, what happened to the world-building part? I know that many times the things I enjoy most in others'' writing are the cool worldbuilding ideas, and I''m having almost as much difficulty building my alien society and its magic system as I am with plotting. The central gimmic of my story is that these aliens sculpt bodies (called Constructs) and steal minds from elsewhere to use to animate these bodies. Thus my main character is a human whose mind is stolen (killing his original body) and put into a new alien body on an alien planet where he has no idea what''s going on, doesn''t speak the language, and is expected to take the social role of a trained animal something like a dog of war or a trained monkey. So I''ve thought up some neat worldbuilding things to go with this (like the aliens have cockatoo crests that express their emotional state and scent glands which have lots of social uses and taboos...) but I still need a lot more before I''ll have a world as rich as, say, that of the Harry Potter books.

Anyway, I don''t know if this helped, as you seem to have basically the same problems I do. Do tell me if you find any magic tricks for getting a plot to sort itself out.

quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Hmm, lets see if I can list the themes that are involved in my current novel project.

A nice list One suggestion I can make, for every theme consider writing down particular points you''re planning to explore. This should be short enough so you could reread it in twenty minutes and long enough to encapsulate most points you''re interesting in covering. For instance, your slavery theme. What kind of slavery are you talking about? Worker slaves, sex slaves, servant slaves. Do they love their master, do they hate him? Do they feel like they are lesser beings and deserve to be slaves? Is slavery moral (some people will tell you it is, perhaps you want to introduce a character that adopts this philosophy). I could think of 5-50 pages of notes on this particular theme. I''d keep my notes short though, ten pages at most. I found this to be necessary because it''s next to impossible to keep everything in my head.

quote:Original post by sunandshadow
I just read several books on how to write romance novels and several on the military mindset and the social programming aspects of bootcamp and other military training.

Big mistake. Your novel can become a lot deeper than you yourself can possibly imagine if you research enough. To get back to the slavery theme. I gurantee you the ancient greeks have discussed this topic to death, it''s morality, it''s implications, etc. There are plenty of diaries available that can help you get into the mindset of a slave as well as the owner. Philosophical and political implications. Economic implications. This may seem unimportant in a romance novel, but if you think about it, why not progress beyond the pigeonhole? Introduce more levels of complexity and symbolism? You get the idea.

quote:Original post by sunandshadow
I would call this plotting, and this is also the most difficult part for me, although I have met people who are natural-born plotters.

A major problem with this is that in any novel (like in life) early events affect the future in ways we can''t even begin to imagine. This won''t happen with a linear approach. Have you ever read a novel where a little thing mentioned in the beginning plays vital importance at the end? Or when many threads weave perfectly into one? You simply can''t do this by progressing from a beginning to end. Essentially in order to come up with a *good* plot you have to adopt a very long iterative process. You''d have to go back and forth and constantly reshape the plot until every little detail plays vital importance and every thread ends up fitting perfectly into the story. I simply can''t do this well. I can''t imagine how someone would do this naturally (although I''m sure such freaks exist ).

quote:Original post by sunandshadow
I tell my sister and my roommate about my ideas; my sister at least is encouraging, if not terribly helpful, and my roommate, not liking the type of story I want to write, has been sufficiently discouraging that I quit telling him much of anything, and that arrangement is much better for my motivation and self-esteem, if not for my relationship with him.

Romance novels aren''t my thing either but I don''t consider myself a bad person Don''t be too hard on your roommate, perhaps what you''re trying to accomplish just isn''t his cup of tea.

quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Err, what happened to the world-building part?

Ah, yes, I missed this part for some reason. This comes to me fairly naturally though and is a direct consequence of the themes I chose. Basically, look at your themes, try to image what setting would suit your exploration of these themes best and then create your world

Except for actualy writing I find plotting to be the hardest part of the process. I wonder if there are any advices masters of plotting ever gave in interviews to young authors

"reshape the plot until every little detail plays vital importance and every thread ends up fitting perfectly into the story."
hmm, I disagree, you don't have to explore every hook or thread thats introduced in a story there can still be unresolved issues and problems when the story comes to an end. That often helps the story since it provides a sense of continueness, that events and characters continue going on after the story has ended.

I've read through this thread, and well I don't do any of those things when I write. To be honest I usually just jot down ideas I have for the story, events I want to happen, characters, concept and ideas I'd like to portray and that about it for the planning. I Take extra couple of minutes to decieded roughly how the chapter will begin and end. Then thats it, I sit down and write. The rest of the details just fill themselves in along the way. Of course every now and then I have to stop and think out the details of an abstract idea that neededs to be included at that point in the story.

For me the most challenging part is the wording, going back over what I've written and impoving the lanague and artisty of the words. But that could be because I think I'm hack and that my work is poorly written. Other people seem to disagree but then again they could somply be being polite.

I thought about it again sometime I do reserch, if there are import story details that I need to know more about. Such as the time I reserched british legends in order for a story.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I'm a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document



[edited by - TechnoGoth on October 6, 2003 8:50:01 AM]

I think this process is unique to every writer, and it even differs from idea to idea. Sometimes complete ideas for a story just hit me from nowhere. Other times I come up with a core idea, and then build around it. And sometimes I just suddenly have a character in my head, and I have to find a story for him.

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Jonas Kyratzes - progressive game design & development
Press ALT + F4 to see the special admin page.

quote:Original post by CoffeeMug
A nice list One suggestion I can make, for every theme consider writing down particular points you''re planning to explore. This should be short enough so you could reread it in twenty minutes and long enough to encapsulate most points you''re interesting in covering. For instance, your slavery theme. What kind of slavery are you talking about? Worker slaves, sex slaves, servant slaves. Do they love their master, do they hate him? Do they feel like they are lesser beings and deserve to be slaves? Is slavery moral (some people will tell you it is, perhaps you want to introduce a character that adopts this philosophy). I could think of 5-50 pages of notes on this particular theme. I''d keep my notes short though, ten pages at most. I found this to be necessary because it''s next to impossible to keep everything in my head.

Thanks, this is helpful! I''m still working on making these lists, but they are already helping me generate ideas for interesting scenes and organize the ideas I already had.

quote:
Big mistake. Your novel can become a lot deeper than you yourself can possibly imagine if you research enough. To get back to the slavery theme. I gurantee you the ancient greeks have discussed this topic to death, it''s morality, it''s implications, etc. There are plenty of diaries available that can help you get into the mindset of a slave as well as the owner. Philosophical and political implications. Economic implications. This may seem unimportant in a romance novel, but if you think about it, why not progress beyond the pigeonhole? Introduce more levels of complexity and symbolism? You get the idea.

I didn''t find the research overwhelming - I''m not a detail-oriented person so I always ignore the details of what I research anyway; my goal in reading the military stuff was to understand the psychological effects of basic training and indoctrination, and the way drill seargeants talk, and I succeded at the first - the second I will have to re-read a few of the novels and practice before I can do it well enough.

The problem of ''this may seem unimportant in a romance novel'' actually doesn''t apply to me. I''m not writing a romance novel qua Silouhette or one of the other big lines; ironically I detest most romance novels because they''re written by dumb people about dumb characters with a minimum of worldbuilding. Similarly I''m not writing a military novel qua military novel because these are created by and for macho traditional guys who have a totally different mindset than I do. The only reason I refer to my book as a ''romance novel'' is that it has a traditional romance plot structure (well, as close to traditional as you can get when you have three main characters rather than two) and the relationships
between the characters are what drive the book, so it really is about romance. But when I''m done I hope to have something like a Lois Bujold or Catherine Asaro''s books: a blend of romance, military, and science fiction/fantasy, but marketed towards sf&f readers.

I''ve actually already researched slavery to death, since I''ve been interested in it since highschool and often use reasearch paper assignments as an excuse to read about plantations and roman slavery and relevant philosophy. Really, I don''t think I could write anything without introducing levels of complexity and symbolism. If you like, take a look at one of my longer pieces of writing, you''ll find yourself tripping over philosophy and landing in piles of symbolism.

Linkage for the curious:
_As the Moon Loves the Sun_, a _Lord of the Rings_ m/m/f fanfic (Rated PG-15)
_Facepaint_, a _Fushigi Yuugi_ m/m fanfic (rated NC-17)

quote:
A major problem with this is that in any novel (like in life) early events affect the future in ways we can''t even begin to imagine. This won''t happen with a linear approach. Have you ever read a novel where a little thing mentioned in the beginning plays vital importance at the end? Or when many threads weave perfectly into one? You simply can''t do this by progressing from a beginning to end. Essentially in order to come up with a *good* plot you have to adopt a very long iterative process. You''d have to go back and forth and constantly reshape the plot until every little detail plays vital importance and every thread ends up fitting perfectly into the story. I simply can''t do this well. I can''t imagine how someone would do this naturally (although I''m sure such freaks exist ).

snip

Except for actualy writing I find plotting to be the hardest part of the process. I wonder if there are any advices masters of plotting ever gave in interviews to young authors

Well, I myself don''t write linearly; I generally write whichever scenes I feel like I know enough to write, and then I fill in between these, editing as I go to foreshadow things and make things consistent. So in other words I do write iteratively; my problem at the moment is that I have to have certain plot points (namely the climax) decided before I can begin this iterative process, and, well, I haven''t decided them yet.

There are indeed several pieves of writing floating around where writers give advice about plotting. I''ve read several whole books on the subject, and more essaies, articles and interviews. But I found that I couldn''t use most of this information because it''s almost all about plots where there is an antagonist. My plot has no antagonist, or rather two of the characters could equally be considered the hero/heroine or the antagonist, depending on whether you picked one to root for. But reading those books on how to write a romance novel really helped me out because they assumed that you were trying to create conflict between the hero and the heroine, and one specifically talked about what to do if you don''t have a villain!

And then today (the reason I''m posting now) I just had an epiphany! See, I have 3 main characters, let''s call them M, A, and L. M is beyond question the viewpoint character, and I had been assuming this meant that he was the hero (or heroine, if you''re thinking in terms of romance novels). Which would put A and L as the love interests and each others'' rivals. This sounds okay... except the problem is A and L don''t act like rivals at all! They weren''t trying to compete with each other to impress M; L wanted A to pay attention to him and A considered M to be a platonic best friend and was actively avoiding L. O_o So today I was looking through my notebook, and I saw where it was written, "What is M''s heroic goal?" because the hero/heroine''s supposed to have a driving goal of some sort, and this is really the root of what makes plot happen, according to all the books. But I had put a "?" there because M didn''t really have a driving goal; all he wanted to do was figure out where the hell he was and what was expected of him as a member of a new alien culture.

So I was looking at this and I thought, "You know, it''s _impossible_ for M to have a heroic goal - he''s just been dropped into a completely new world, and to have a goal you have to know enough about your world to be determined to change some aspect of it. So... if M can''t have a heroic goal... maybe M''s not the hero?" Bingo! Eureka! Big lightbulb appearing above my head! "If M''s not the hero... then A must be the Hero (cause he''s the macho one, and he has a heroic goal of being a good soldier and man), and L must be the heroine (because he''s the non-macho one and he has a heroic goal of getting A to pay attention to him)! Erm... but where does that leave M? Caught in the crossfire, a mediator, the universal lubrican poured between the immovable object (A) and the irresistable force (L) until something slips! And each little slip and skid would be a plot turning point, from the initial incident of M''s arrival to the climax of the first arc where the tension between A and L is finally resolved!" So, now if I can just figure out how that resolution happens, I should have the bare minimum first plot art for the book, and be able to start my iterative writing process!


Anyway, tell me what type of plot you want to write, and I can try to recommend some books about that type of plot if you like.

*bump* I think this is a great thread, I don't want it to die yet.

BTW I had another idea for my book's title. I didn't like _Gained in Translation_ much; anybody like _A Thing Worthy Of Loyalty_ better or have any ideas for variations on it?

[edited by - sunandshadow on October 19, 2003 9:22:01 PM]

Today I was trying a new technique for outlining plot, and it worked pretty well, so I''ll share. I theorized that since I am a character writer, I have been having problems because I was thinking of plot as things that happen, or things that people do, neither of which really matter to me. What I needed to do instead was think of plot as "how individual characters and relationships between characters change." So I made a list of all the little changes in attitude or worldview each of the characters goes through in the disorderly scenes I''d been randomly generating. Came up with about 30 of these. And darned if it wasn''t obvious almost exactly what order they logically had to go in! ^_^ There''re still a few decisions to be made, mostly about the details of how things happen, (is it too cliche for L to kidnap M?) but now I have a rough plot outline! ^_^

And also, my dictionary of Indo-European roots arrived in the mail so I can work more on the language I''m creating. Life is good. ^_^ Now, if only I had a great title...

Design and implement? Hmm, quite an analytical approach. Where's the inspiration? Where's the passion? Those are the things that are going to get you through the dark hours, the bland passage improvement areas.

The Design and Implement aspects are thoroughly documented at zillions of sites and in hundreds of books. There's no shortage of how to write books, what is in rare supply is 'being a creative person without falling into all the traps and myths that few break out of to success financially and critically.'

There's an old adage in screenwriting that you have to forget about the money. You've known how to tell a story since you were first introduced to oral tradition when being read stories as a child. All the structural elements and techniques, styles and approaches are analyzed to death and detriment of the art form, or as a great album title recently said, "The dying art of living."

I suggest the great stories come from great people, Hemingway, Faulkner, anyone you can just about name went out and took a bite out of fear, adventure, insecurity and the uncomfortable to find the things that makes humans great and then they described what they saw and how their take was on it. I suggest you are already an expert writer, but your best writing is going to come from great living, great experience and being a great human. The rest is rulebooks for teachers who couldn't lead themselves or others or an idea out of acknowledgement by doting, nodding paradigm guardians.

All you need to know about writing you already know and don't have to write down, what you do have to write down is your take on awe, discovery and reflection. And for that, you have to walk outside the door and go where you are not familiar, where you are not comfortable, where you are absolutely afraid, where things don't make sense and you determine to make sense out of them.

Writing is tough enough that you don't have to mechanistically grind yourself for months along a path that bring you little reward past recognition of accomplishement and some remunertation and status. The goal is to stand in awe and wonderment of what you have discovered that was not so easily researched, so easily architected, or, as Earnest Hemingway used to say, "A good book nearly kills you."

There is so much more to this that is not being even paid attention to, and is yet the secret I just could not stand by mute. Wow, wonder what my response would have been like if I'd had a second cup of coffee.

[edited by - adventuredesign on November 1, 2003 10:19:25 PM]

Adventuredesign - Huh, I think that''s the first time I''ve ever utterly disagreed with one of your posts.

IMO, great writing is not correlated with living an adventuresome life like Hemmingway did (or Bishop_Pass is always telling us to). I would say the best writers throughout history have been those driven by loneliness, boredom, or oppression to create an escape for themselves by imagining a world so vivid they could hide from the world in it, characters so cool they could pretend they were them, love objects so sexy they could forget their loneliness, a world with magic and the possibility to overcome any oppressive evil, etc.

It is passion that falters in the face of tedious editing and rewriting, and the scientist''s quiet intellectual enthusiasm that will pull you through. (Although passion is of course vital for having the courage to take on such a big project in the first place and to write the key scenes of high drama, comedy, thrills, and tragedy.)

While there may be a zillion places people have theorized about how to write, this documentation is not ''thorough'' and is extremely disorganized, such that a writer must study the various theories and impose his/her own order on them ( i.e. ''write them down'') in order to get anything useful out of them.

I have seen many novels-in-progress die because no one had the analytical skills to figure out what was wrong with their design, but not one that died from being over-analyzed.