- Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter”? I’d say I was a “plotter”, maybe. If I get an idea for a scene and I start writing, it keeps going. But usually that happens after I do a lot of thinking.
- Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as I write”?
I do end up doing a few lists of character traits that I can define – likes, dislikes, hobbies, age etc. but there are tons of things that crop up as I write and I usually go along with it. It drives the plot. - Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing? By the time I start writing anything even if the idea has just occurred to me, I know a lot about the characters. By the time I am writing anything permanent, they are as real to me as any other people I know. In fact, most of the time when I am not writing, they sit in my head and argue and fuss and fight and develop themselves.
- Books on plotting – useful or harmful?
I used to worry about plot till I realised I have plots but not the sort that you find in craft books or at least not the sort people expect. The point is I have awesome characters and it’s their interaction with each other and their surroundings that creates the plot in the first place. What I do find useful is research on your setting and any history and so on. - Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work? Procrastinate. Definitely.
- Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
If I get started and don’t get interrupted, I can go on for ages. Over a large period of time though, I do these “going on for ages” stints about once in a blue moon. Because I procrastinate. - Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
When I wrote my first novel (never published because it was crap and therefore never will be) I used to come home from school and write the entire afternoon. I was 16 and it took me two years to come up with 400 pages of writing that I was finally happy with to stop editing. It still needs work. A lot of work. But I honed my skills with it.Now, I am a “when I am curled up under the blanket in bed” writer or a “sometimes when I am out, just when I have no pen or paper” writer or a “wish I was elsewhere, squashed up in tiny plane seat” writer. On family holidays I am a “damn, my sister put out the light and went to sleep and I want to write now” writer.
- Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I can tune things out. I am fine with music, with any noise. What I am not thrilled about is any noise that is clearly a direct request for a response from me such as someone asking a question or the cat yowling in a certain way. I can tune everything out except calls for my attention – kind of like Superman finetuning his super hearing so that he can hear cries for help but doesn’t get bothered by amplified traffic noise and so on. - Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Whichever I am in the mood for. Whichever is closest to hand. - Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?
Yes. Quite often the idea is something like “Oooh, what if?” and it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes to figure out the ending. The hardest bit is figuring out how to get my characters from the start to the end. I never can figure that part out unless I make myself write from beginning to end without skipping any bits in the middle. - Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
Thing is, what’s new on the shelves right now is what was selling 12 – 18 months ago. So no. In fact, the kind of stuff I write is not always the kind of stuff I’d read and frankly, I am kinda of bored with what’s been on the shelves for the past few years. Friends loan or gift me books that make me happy though but they are not recently published stuff. - Editing – love it or hate it?
You’re going to hate me for this. I’ve been writing stories (good and bad) since I was nine. Actually, writing them down or attempting to. I am twenty six now. That’s a long time to be thinking in a certain way. Plus my mother is an English teacher. I now freelance as an editor. Basically, I describe what’s in my head but when I am writing or typing? I do the first edit as I go. In terms of sentence structure and overall coherence, the words go where they need to go from the beginning. In terms of small things like exchanging double quotes for single quotes or adding in the occasional missing “and” in somewhere, I catch those on the first read through. My plot usually flows logically because I usually have done a lot of thinking about it beforehand.
|
|||
|
October 31, 2009
A Writing Meme: What's Your Writing Style?Category: Writing Articles | Comments: 3
Fave: Hire me: marisa.wikramanayake@gmail.com / +61 0419 925 300 Viewed: 244 | 3 comments to A Writing Meme: What’s Your Writing Style? |
|||
|
Copyright © 2010 Marisa Wikramanayake - All Rights Reserved Log in 
This work by Marisa Wikramanayake is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Australia. |
|||
New blog post: A Writing Meme: What’s Your… http://marisa.com.au/?p=64 #writechat, #marisa #mwikramanayake #writing #editing #editor #meme
Very useful, especially since it’s almost time for NaNoWriMo. Are you participating this year?
No but tell all your friends that the first person to DM me on twitter at @mwikramanayake or to email me, get to get their NaNoWriMo novel brainstormed and edited for free once it is done!