There is no wrong way to write. I wish I could express this in a way that would just keep all hesitant writers going. Just keep on writing! You’re not wrong, you just keep getting better at your own method!
Everyone has a different writing style and process. Regardless how similar they seem to the writing process of others, there’s always something unique about how they specifically go about their projects. We do NOT just fall into the categories of: “writing on the fly/by the seat of your pants/spur of the moment” or “plan to death/map everything out/organizational madness” I like to think that my friends and I fall somewhere in between, but on different sides of the “spectrum.” Not only that, but some of us use different methods of writing from one story to another!
For the last four years or so, I’ve been trying to figure out the process that works best for me, and I think I have finally, finally figured it out!
So, without further ado, I present to you:
MICHITHETHIRD’S METHOD OF MADNESS
STEP 1: The Spark of Inspiration
Over the years, I found that I can find inspiration in just about anything: objects, people, animals, places, themes, mythological beasts, songs, a family member’s personality…
For this particular example, I am using the story Loving Sable’s Prime…before its prime (I’m such a dork). While this story is a collaboration with @Rainbow , I’m the one physically writing it. The reason it’s ‘before its prime’ is because I’m still currently working on this project. Anyway, Loving Sable’s Prime. The “spark of inspiration” for this one was the tiniest moment when I became curious about what kind of gems my friend (and sister from another mister) @Rainbow liked. Not so much as to actually own, since gems are expensive, of course…but, to look at or draw or play with in the form of marbles that emulated their colors that as kids you hold up to the sun or against a flashlight to see them flash in their respective colors (I had a colorful and imaginative childhood). Cat, lover of red hues, naturally responded with “rubies!”
Rubies~ Ruby would sound like a fun character name. What if she was named Ruby for her ruby-red hair? Wait, what if Ruby was her namesake? In fact, what if her whole family had the last name of Ruby, and they were all redheads? What if there are other families, all named after gems, with hair colors that matched their namesakes?? This is more or less how that process went down during the conversation:
Michi: Ok…so Ruby is a girl, the MC with a male love interest…hmm what gem would be nice for him? Should he be a fancy spectrum like an Opal or maybe Jade? I’ll worry about what to name the series later.
Cat: What about Onyx? A black gem… my bad boy weakness is showing. What colour fits to ruby red?
Michi: Done. Ok Ruby is the girl, main character. Onyx is the boy, male love interest. Bad boy. Maybe Ruby and Onyx are their last names (family names)? -stretches- Let’s see…let’s see…I love to world build, you know this.
Cat: oooh yes that works too. Ruby could be like… royalty? because rubies are quite expensive
MichiTheThird: Researching priceless stones and their values right now.
::
A fantasy world was already forming in my head for that redhaired girl…which led to…
STEP 2: Partial World Building
I love writing fantasy stories because it allows me to create entire towns, worlds, or whole galaxies of my own making. But, world building can also apply to a story set in real time! Things like…where did some of the characters grow up? Did they live in the country? Did they live in the city? Where does the story more or less take place? Inside a house? At a building downtown? In the woods?
World building is the best, in my own personal opinion, when it is centered around the main character. In the case of Loving Sable’s Prime, I tried to “cater” the world building to be a place that someone like our redheaded ruby MC (Main Character) would exist. Cat already gave us a clue “…hey, what if she’s royalty?” That got me thinking about the world’s society and how it could be pieced together. If there is royalty, then there are other classes: royals, high society, middle class/merchant class, low class…but, which “Gems” were what class??? After some researching, I suggested to go by the stone’s hardness and value:
Michi: Rubies are the 4th most valuable gemstones. A step above Emeralds, which gives us an instant rival.
Cat: which ones are the first three?
Michi: 1. Red Diamond, 2. Blue Diamond, 3. Pink Diamond (LMAO wow). All the lists are slightly different though.
Cat: oh okay, so Rubies would be the first non-Diamonds
Michi: Yes, Rubies actually are the first non-diamonds
Cat: so, a different family?
Michi: Yes…perhaps the royals are the diamonds and Rubies and Emeralds and these: Alexandrite, Musgravite, Red Beryl, Black Opal, Tanzanite are all high society?
Cat: yes!
Michi:Oooooo! I found a list by the stone’s hardness!
Cat: that sounds like a good system
::
After figuring out a bit more of the world, we then worked on…
STEP 3: Character Design
Let me start by saying that character design is usually not all that important in a story. I’ve once read an engaging book where all we knew were the color of the main character’s eyes. He could have been bald for all we knew, and it was still a compelling story. Now, where was I? Right! So, character design in terms of specific, teeny tiny details…that’s not necessary for the enjoyment of a story. HOWEVER, since I also moonlight as an artist, I like to have a mental picture of the characters I write about, especially the MC. So, I began by talking character specifics with Cat like hair, eye color, skin tones, and defining details like tattoos or piercings or freckles…
Michi: I think their eyes and skin tones can be random. Though I’m thinking maybe an olive or tan for Onyx and fair or average for Ruby and Blue Diamond prince might be a deep brown, and Sapphire a mocha Red Diamond…maybe he’s very fair skinned and beautiful like a doll? And Emerald, maybe she has freckles or something. I love freckles, but maybe she might not, and it’s one of her insecurities…and Ruby’s eyes are…amber? Like brownish amber? Everyone’s hair color is the same as their gem
Cat: those all sounds like good ideas!
::
And then, because my memory has always been faulty, I decided to keep everything organized in…
STEP 4: Basic Statistic Charts
Charts are my friends.
While they can be time consuming and require much patience, once they are complete, they are the most effective memory jogger I could possibly have. A chart can not only help me keep track of every character, big and small…it also helps me balance out the colors used. I can almost feel my colorblind friends rolling their eyes at me, but even they cannot deny that there is enough contrast in the chart below:
A chart like this is also helpful later on whenever I am able to sit down and try drawing out the characters:
Once I have a good idea of what the characters look like in my head, the next step is to begin the…
STEP 5: Main Character Excavation
For some writers, this step is actually the FIRST step, and I applaud that wholeheartedly. The more you get to know your MC, the easier it will be to understand why they act or react a certain way to just about every situation you throw at them. However, the type of excavation I’m talking about isn’t “knowing every single aspect of the main character from the moment they were a fetus.” The excavation I hunt for is “what, specifically, made you this way?”
For example: Braids! A character might have enjoyed braiding hair because the concentration required to weave an elaborate hairstyle can help clear their mind, giving them calm and peace inside. But, when did they start practicing braids in the first place and why? Well, perhaps the MC had a certain best friend with a long mass of unruly curly hair that always flopped about on her face and it aggravated her back when they were little kids. So, the MC took it upon themselves to help manage that wild hair with braids.
While that particular excavation was as simple as mining for coal in Minecraft, the bigger questions are like hunting for elusive diamonds. Questions like: What will it take to force this character out of their shell? What is the one thing they hate more than anything else that would, therefore, rile them up into angry action? Or, if the character has anger management issues, what is the one thing that can calm them down?
It’s important to note that, while knowing the backstory of a character is good, the story itself doesn’t need specific details like “the first time they became constipated and were locked in the bathroom for over an hour…” The questions we need answers to need to be relevant to what the story is about. Unless the character’s constipation is a warning of an impending incurable disease that affects his bowels during the course of the story, we totally don’t need to know about it.
On the subject of backstories, the next step involves…
STEP 6: Backstory Road Tests
As I explained previously, not all backstory specifics are diamonds. While eating ice cream for the first time at the age of four might be a fond memory for the main character, it’s a completely useless one if ice cream plays no part in the story. However, if the main character ends up in space during the second or third arc of the story, then it will be very handy to have written a backstory scene of when and why the MC wanted to become an astronaut in the first place. Maybe they were so sick of politicians expediting global warming, and seeing news jam-packed with disasters while he was growing up that he became an astronaut for downright survival.
Knowing specifically what drove him to learn, you have a better understanding of how he has acted throughout his life and how he acts as an adult later on. He stopped voting. Why? He hates all politicians. He doesn’t browse the internet. Why? Because he’s sick and tired of all the bad news. So, what happens if he saves the life of a stranded politician who is desperate to learn of any news regarding other possible survivors? 
Will our astronaut MC be able to overcome his aversion to politicians in order to help others?
After those backstory road tests, I go for…
STEP 7: More Main Character Excavation
Now, this is definitely an extra step that only I usually do. Most writers probably get all of the information they need about the backstory of their MCs on the first round of digging, especially if they already have an idea of how they want the story to end. I, on the other hand, want to ensure that everything that leads to the end can be traced back to each of the MC’s decisions. And to be able to do that, I need to know how the MC makes those decisions. To know that, I need to figure out how the MC has handled those kinds of situations in earlier stages of their lives…which sometimes means that I have to go back and put that MC into those very situations as a kid, and then as an adolescent.
Example: Let’s say that a climactic part of a story is when the MC manages to save a business company from going bankrupt…for her, it’s the bright and shining moment she needs in order to decide what to do with her life…to become an accountant and make a lot of money. But, what if her relationship with numbers wasn’t always this way? As a child, she was far more advanced with mathematics than even her grade school teachers. But, as a teenager, she learned that math was for geeks and she had joined the ‘popular’ crowds. Her younger siblings, however, didn’t mind being nerds and having friends that joined them in their passion for Dungeons and Dragons. And since she was comfortable enough with them to be herself, she actually enjoyed it whenever her little brother would call her over to help them quickly calculate the rolls of multiple dice at once, something she could do almost instantaneously. Her love of numbers and math never died, but her perception of what was ‘cool’ and ‘uncool’ became a block in her path towards success…at least until that moment when a co-worker fears fraudulent accounts in the company over a miscalculation that she manages to catch on time.
After getting a better grasp on the main character and how they think, act, and react, the next step for me is a…
STEP 8: Flexible Story Outline
I’ve noticed over the years that my outlines are never 100% set in stone. Sometimes I merge two scenes into one. Sometimes I take out scenes or add another scene in. The outlines that are created are basic and skeletal in form, nothing too fleshed out or detailed. Though, I heard some writers work best with detailed outlines from scene to scene, and if that works better for you, go for it. The reason my outline’s skeletal at first is because I want it to give me what some writers can generally do with a single thought…I want to see the story’s arc, the beginning, middle, and end.
Back before I made MC-focused stories, I would sometimes have the beginning and the end, but not the middle…or I would have the beginning and middle, but not the end…or I’d even have the middle and the end, but no idea where or how to start. Over the years, I’ve learned that every segment of the story can be mapped out according to the MC’s actions and reactions. These days, instead of thinking of the story’s events from beginning, middle, and end…I merely think of “where is the character right now in life, and where do I want the character to be in life at the end.”
For example: A boy lives with an abusive father and is tormented by dreams of a past life which he denies wholeheartedly because, d*mn it, his life is hard enough as it is. This MC is scared, in denial, and manipulated by his father at the beginning of the story. By the end of the story, I wanted him to stop running away, accept his past, and get out from under his father’s thumb…and if he found love along the way, even better (this is actually the overall summary of Distant Calls, if anyone’s curious to read it).
With a tentative outline on hand, the next step is the…
STEP 9: First Few Chapters Road Tests
When I have a more clear picture of where I want the story to go but, most importantly, the decisions the MC makes in order to get from point A to point B…I then feel confident enough to start writing more. By this point, I probably have laid down a tentative first scene or even a first chapter. This first chapter changes over and over again as more scenes and chapters are added. Why? I have two pet peeves when it comes to stories (or even movies that I watch)…missing seeds, and seeds that never bloom.
What’s a missing seed? A missing seed is…let’s say you have an epiphany when you’re two-thirds into the story, and you know that when you add this segment to the end, it will be amazing. BUT, you didn’t allude to this new development from the beginning…this comes off as “out of the blue” to the reader, or worse, deus ex machina…like some kind of divine intervention that couldn’t have happened otherwise. You don’t want this in your story. You want to build up to that new epiphany bit by bit…so, this is the biggest reason I no longer post chapters immediately as I finish them. Sometimes I want something in the end so badly that I want to make sure the impact is felt throughout the whole thing. I go back and add it bit by bit…a hint at the beginning, a reminder in the middle, and then BAM!
What’s a seed that never bloomed? A seed that never blooms is a bit of the opposite of a missing seed. A seed that never bloomed is an idea that was planted in the beginning of the story that makes you think…and sometimes, it does serve its purpose, perhaps it’s to show why a character does not do a certain thing that seems “normal” to everyone else. The part that aggravates me as a reader is if that seed is mentioned a few more times in the story…but, then it NEVER blooms. I’ve seen seeds that downright grow within a story, but never finish blossoming! Example: In a movie I recently watched, the main character is shown with a toothache again and again…she video conferences her dentist because she is too stubborn to physically go to the dentist and has severe social anxiety to the point that she never leaves her apartment. The movie alluded to this toothache so many times that I wanted one of two things to happen:
- The root of the tooth is so infected that it leads to her death.
- After having survived worse throughout the movie, she just marches her behind over to the dentist for a root canal without fear.
But, neither of those things happened. Her toothache was the only seed that never bloomed. All of the other seeds in the movie, however, bloomed nicely. I wouldn’t have been so aggravated had they only mentioned the toothache once, just to show that her social anxiety keeps her from so much as physically going to the dentist. But, they kept going back to that blasted tooth again and again without any final payoff.
So, because both of those frustrate me, missing seeds and seeds that never bloom, I go back and keep layering until I am satisfied.
Usually, by that point, I will have reached the…
STEP 10: Completion of the First Draft
It doesn’t matter whether I think my first draft is decent or not, there is little in this world that gives me more pleasure that concluding a story. Sometimes, I will have worked so long on a story that I then become sick of so much as looking at it after I type the words “The End.” I might ignore it for a week before going back and giving it a read-over to try my best to look for any holes or loose strings…places where I may have thought I typed something coherent in (be it external or internal dialogue), but in reality I was half-asleep when I wrote that part and have to go back in and flesh it out some more.
However, there’s no way I caught everything, so first, it’s time for…
STEP 11: Refining and Grammar Editing
I might stop looking at a completed story for up to a whole week before I run it through Grammarly (or another editing program or even spellcheck on Word) for editing. Editing a whole story with all of its chapters takes hours, even days long. @Rainbow herself has complained about how long it took her just to edit and refine a third arc of one of her stories. I feel the same exact way. At first, it’s almost even fun to catch any typos, misspellings, or misplaced quotations and commas…but, after your third hour or so, you start feeling burned out.
Assuming you survive this step, the next part is to call in the cavalry. Time for…
STEP 12: Beta Reader Help
When your first draft is at least cleaned up of generic errors that you’ve managed to catch, it’s time to polish it up even more with all of the errors and any plot holes you couldn’t catch. Let’s face it, try as you might, after working on a story for so long, you can’t catch all of your own mistakes. You become blind to them. You accidentally wrote F*ck instead of Tuck for a side character’s name. You might have alluded to a childhood memory that was only lightly mentioned, but never fully explained (example: In your head, you envisioned the flashback of two friends braiding a third friend’s hair together, but only friend A actually says aloud how they enjoyed the activity…friend B never mentioned doing anything of the like, and he is the one that freaks out the most when friend C chops it all off). Friends that are willing to take the time to read your first draft are heroes at this point. They will help find any odd inconsistencies or details that seem off.
But, then you will need…
STEP 13: Sharper Eyes
This is when I beg…I mean, seek the help of my fellow writing friends. Writers know what they want to read, and they definitely know when something feels off, even the smallest thing. Hell, @Rainbow herself was my ‘sharper eyes’ for The Dawn’s Dusk, and she even caught a term that I had written wrong…a term I had made up myself for the story’s world. She is that good. But, considering that she’s just a bit too involved in Loving Sable’s Prime, it will probably be @CrazyCaliope by that point.
After owning up to mistakes you didn’t even realize you made in your own work, you are free to…
STEP 14: Weep Profusely
…for you are finally ready to post your story and share it with everyone else…your remaining four readers. 
And that concludes my method of madness.
Woah! I don’t know what I expected when I opened this thread, but it was not this. This was an amazing post! It’s really helpful seeing someone else’s method of writing in so much detail.
