Pre-writing

Catching up on my podcasts, if you don't know Writing Excuses you should, and came across this one about pre-writing.

According to the podcast, pre-writing is all the before writing writing that is done on a manuscript. In my particular case as part outliner/part discovery writer, it means looking back at my outline and then brainstorming neat things to happen to my characters on their way to the plot point I'm looking at for the day. However, what struck me as interesting about this podcast is that it also notes things about tone text and music as a way to get into a specific headspace.

Music to get into the right headspace is something I've explored previously, however, I've never made it as narrow as is suggested. Instead, I tend to think in terms of entire albums. The idea of parsing that down to one or two songs, or even a single youtube video is almost mindblowingly simple. Something I will definitely be trying out to see if it cuts down on the amount of time it takes to get into a specific mind frame.

The other thing they discussed was tone text. I suppose this could be done using your own text by simply reading back over it before beginning with anything new for the day, but they discussed using an outside text (such as Jane Austen) in order to preserve the sound of the writing as you are working your way forward on a manuscript.

I will admit, none of this is groundbreaking, and perhaps if I took more creative writing courses it would seem less interesting to me, but I found this interesting and thought it would be good to share.

If you haven't already, check out the Writing Excuses podcast. It's well worth the 20 minutes or so a week.



In other news, I'm reaching the end of "Winning his Kingdom", She Becomes Death book 3. It's a bittersweet nearness for me seeing as I've been in this world with these characters for the better part of three years now. Yet, somehow, I've got to tag a 'The End' onto this story and let them go on to whatever fate may hold for them. Plus, I can always come back to the world if the need strikes and maybe it will.