The Creative Writer's Companion: Navigating the Writing Process
Matt: [00:00:00] Welcome once again to Write Out Loud, the podcast where we explore all of the things related to writing and storytelling and we, of course, have with us today, the magical, the magnificent, the amazing, the wonderful, the adorable Tina.
Christina: Hello.
Matt: Hello. And of course, I'm Matt. And we're going to talk about some of the general topics around writing and how do you get the most really out of your writing and some of the things that I thought maybe we could explore. I was talking about some of the, just general workflow type stuff.
Like how do you really get your writing going? What are some of the tips and techniques you can use for that? How much maybe do you weigh in research versus just making stuff up as you go? , Any specific writing tools things like that. So just kind of exploring the whole process and having a little bit of a conversation.
What do you think?
Christina: I think that sounds wonderful.
Matt: All right. Well, I dig it. I dig it. So let's go ahead. Let's see what we got today. So let's first talk a little bit about just, a typical [00:01:00] workflow. What are some of the ways that people get into the writing process based on all of the authors that you know, based on your own writing style, like what are some of the nuts and bolts of that writing process?
Christina: First of all, everybody is different. I mean, I, I've. Got a stable full of authors, and I don't even know if any of them, are alike in their process. And I think that the most important thing you can do especially as an aspiring author, as a writer trying to, do something solid that you can publish, put out there, do what you're going to do with it is figure out what your process is, figure out Not only who do you want to be as a writer but how do you work the best?
So if you are someone who, is best in the morning, you're bright eyed, bushy tailed, want to get it done, get the, tackle the day, want to get your [00:02:00] 2000 words in. Schedule that time in the morning. If you are a nighttime writer, schedule that time at night. If you're someone who has other responsibilities, kids, what have you, you've got to work out what schedule, works best, but I would absolutely figure out what that time is.
And schedule that time, if you're someone is just, you don't have any responsibilities. This is already your career. And, you write best, in the middle of the day, then, do that. But you've really got to figure out how. Not just how you write, but who you are as a writer. Who do you want to be? How do you want to make your audience feel? That's actually usually the first question I tell my writers to do is figure out how you want your audience to feel.
How do you want to feel writing? That's going to give you a general direction of what kind of book you want to produce. It's also going to give you an idea of who is going to [00:03:00] read your book. Even though I encourage people to write what they want to write and not necessarily think about whether it's going to sell or not.
I think you still need to figure out who your audience is so that you're making them happy. And it's generally, your favorite genre, the genre that you're going to write, figure out how the audience feels, while reading them. If it's romance, they feel all happy and good.
It's got to have that happy, ever after. That doesn't mean you can't scare the bleep out of them while it happens. They're all the sub genres. If you want to feel that suspense, if that's all, you want to really keep your audience on the edge of their seat because that's what excites you.
Well, guess what? You're going to be writing a mystery thriller suspense, that sort of thing. Once you figure out. How you write. Who you are as a writer, everything else, should really fall into place. And again, it is really [00:04:00] figuring out how you work best. If you work best in silence, figure out a time that there's silence, if you Work best while having a playlist, get that playlist going, get it inspirational, get it, creepy music or in a coffee shop or something hip hop.
Yes, exactly. So yeah, figure out who you are. And how you write,
Matt: Just like anything else you hear lots of different competing. Pieces of wisdom, I guess, is the best way to say it, where some will say, Oh, you know what? The best way to become a better writer is just to do, just get it out on the page, write down, write at least 500 words a day.
And it doesn't matter what you write, just, as long as you're writing something and then there's others that might say, well, no, you should really focus on a specific project. And that will help you kind of hone that craft. And, is there any validity to one or the other? Or is it again, does it go back to who the individual is?
Christina: It is absolutely the individual. The thing is [00:05:00] I'm, I'm not really a big fan of a lot of writing books. A lot of, a lot of people get stuff out of that. I personally, it never influenced anything, that I was writing. And really all of the clients that I work with they all have different books that inspired them that really, something clicked.
So really I think. As an individual, what calls to you to read on the craft of writing, take what really goes, click for you, leave everything else, if something doesn't resonate with you, leave it on the table. I think a lot of people forget that this is really a creative the thing is, would you tell a painter?
Oh, you're not doing that stroke right, right. Maybe an art teacher would to help critique if they're trying to learn a certain technique. And the same can be true [00:06:00] for writing. If you're trying to learn a certain technique, definitely read the books that allow you to do that. But at the end of the day, it's a creative endeavor.
It is absolutely, there is no limit. To what can be done. And I think that's the one thing that I think a lot of writers trying to make a living from this forget is that they get to make up the rules. There's some. Really popular authors out there, New York times bestselling authors that have some of the worst habits, worst techniques, but there's something about their storytelling.
One in particular her name is Kristen Ashley and she can write in alternating first person and third person and somehow make it work. It doesn't...
Matt: It's tough..
Christina: Yeah, it doesn't work for everybody. I would not recommend that. If any clients come to me and they, have that in their [00:07:00] voice and it works, certainly keep going with it.
That's your voice, for Kristen Ashley, that's her voice. That's the way it comes to her and for her storytelling and, and the stories, that she's got, it works. But I wouldn't recommend it for, just anybody but that's what I mean that, you get to make your own rules.
Storytelling doesn't come down to, completely grammatically correct. Sentence. Sure. It comes down to, we've discussed this before with Stephanie Meyer, the months on the page, so, you get to make up the rules to some extent, the only way you don't get to make up the rules is the fact that you still have to communicate.
You still have to have your idea understood, and that's why there are things like grammar that we need to, Still follow
Matt: at least at least somewhat. Yeah. Well, I like that. You mentioned it being a very creative process and therefore there aren't [00:08:00] necessarily rules per se. There are some rules and guidelines and boundaries, but for the most part, like, you kind of get to make up whatever, right?
If you. If your world, there are no specific rules that you have to follow because, it's a, you're, you're out in outer space and you're the only person out there and there's nothing else around. Like, there could be all kinds of things with that. Right. But I think what's interesting is the balance of researching versus just making it up.
Okay. Right. And like, yeah, doing that much work kind of beforehand. What do you think about that?
Christina: Yeah, I, I think if you get caught up in the research beforehand and you're so obsessed with getting it right, you're going to lose some of the creativity. You do want some things to be somewhat accurate and believable.
That's the one thing that I think we haven't talked about on this podcast is that The one element that makes a really good book is believability. We are,[00:09:00] there's a term used in theater that can also be used in, creative writing and storytelling, and that's called the willing suspension of disbelief.
We know ahead of time that this is a story, but we are willing to suspend our disbelief. Our unbelief in something in order to enjoy the story, but there's only so far that that can go, at some point, Oh, this is too unbelievable. That would never happen. How many times have you read a book and that comes up or seen a show or watched a movie and like, Oh my God, that's.
That is totally not realistic. I think there are some places that you can be unrealistic and stretch the boundaries. But you want to be careful and, make sure that you're not crossing those lines of, how, how far will your reader, follow you into that,
Matt: There's been lots of shows, we watch a lot of[00:10:00] a lot of TV shows because there are some really good, well written series that have, some very good storyline with them. And, one of those that we enjoyed was The Resident and that one is Matt Zuckery and a few others. But basically, again, from a willing suspension of disbelief, you're in this hospital, it is going to do things in this hospital where they might explain something you're like, yeah, no doctor's ever gonna explain that.
But that's fine. Like, they're not gonna explain it to another doctor, right? Because it's, yeah, they have to do it for the audience. So fine, whatever. So you kind of like your brain lets that go. But there's a specific scene where there is a large issue with the power system within the hospital, like they're having issues with, yeah.
Power surges and things like that. And at one point, Matt Zuchry's character is like, I'm going to run down to the boiler room and see if I can get this, get this going again. You're like. My man, you are a resident. You are not going down to the boiler room to go kickstart the hospital. Like, it's just not going to happen.
Christina: They've got people on staff that do that [00:11:00] kind of stuff, called maintenance.
Matt: Yeah, it's, so it's just moments where you're like, come on. Yeah,
Christina: yeah, no, I
Matt: agree. They go into all different things, but you know, you see things like that, and it does, it takes you out of the story for just that long. Yes. Sometimes just enough to complain about it and then you go back in.
But other times it is enough to break the entire story.
Christina: But that's the point. It takes you out of the story. That's, that's why you have, those guidelines. I, again, I don't want to call them rules because I'm a rule breaker, but you have. The bumper guards in a bowling alley, you don't want to go out of bounds and, that's the whole thing is I want to be so far sucked into a story that I forget the world around me.
Yes. The minute you remind me that there is a world around me, I'm out, I'm out of it. Maybe I'll put it on pause or, close the book for the night. No. As a writer, I want you binge watching. I want [00:12:00] you binge reading. I want you not to put that book down and, have you looking at the clock at 3 a.
m. going, okay, maybe I can finish this before
Matt: four. Yeah. Well, we, we want that. World of Harry Potter experience. We want that, that level of immersiveness, right? That you are in that world so much that you want to be a part of it. Like you want to, you want to be in it with them, right? And meeting your heroes and meeting your villains even, yeah, you want to have that that story be so expansive that it just takes it literally transports you to another world. Yeah. What do you think? So thinking about the writing process and how people kind of pull the reader in to their world. What are some of the strategies that you think work particularly well to bring that reader in and kind of captivate them?
Christina: I think my favorite one is the bit of mystery. You [00:13:00] want something that gets them to turn that page. It's, it's a question of who, what happened? Oh, we don't know the whole story there. And so you read the next chapter or holding things close to your chest that you're not giving them every bit of information, background, you, you don't want these info dumps that, like, leave no mystery to the book.
Sure. I don't care what. is, I don't care what, movies, TV, books, any of those things you want to have a little bit, who was it that Oh gosh, I'm going to get this wrong, but if you look up I think it's a Ted talk. And I want to say it was JJ Abrams, but I'm not sure. The mystery box he calls it and it's that little bit of information that you're, leaving, leaving a big question mark. Um, you know, I mean, there's, there's a lot of other things that you [00:14:00] can do jump into action right away. It opens with an action piece. One of the things that I like to tell my clients, figure out where the story starts.
Like, where's the real story? And if everything before that is just information, no. No, no, start where the story starts. Start right into the action, start right into the mystery, start right in.
Matt: Nice, okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you about jumping right into the action because I think, again, you kind of hear conflicting points of view.
I've always been a fan of start. In the action start in something that gets the reader kind of going, what the hell is this? Like why am I, even if they question, why am I reading this? Like, I don't know something's, there's something interesting about it, right? Like it makes them think about what it is.
But there are others of course, as there always will be that want maybe a little bit more explanation and a little more world building first before they get to that point. And I can think of certain novels that have done a really good job with that. I think [00:15:00] a lot of the Lord of the Rings types of books have kind of jumped or have kind of built up into that, but there is still an element of jumping right into the action.
So, I don't know.
Christina: Yeah, so, okay, so Lord of the Rings is a hard one to crack because I only got to book two. Before, like, I could only read so many descriptions of trees so that's not to say I'm not a fan, I loved the movies, the movies got right to the meat of it. And there are a lot of people that love the Lord of the Rings.
So in no way am I saying, that it was. Not good. But I wasn't a big fan simply because there was too much and not enough action. Yeah. I need a little more content that pulls me in. Sure. Like I said I stopped with the second book because, this whole thing with the trees and I was like, ah, I think I'm kind of lost.
I'm lost amongst the trees. Sure. [00:16:00] But. They were damn good movies and so, you know, I do think that you can give them the information as the action is unfolding. That's not to say that. A little bit of description. One of my longtime clients has beautiful poetry in her descriptions and that sucks you in.
So it really depends on the technique used on how to draw someone in. Some people, really need that action to get going. I would, I would actually say that if you're not sure how to start, and I think a lot of writers are in that same boat, a lot of people have trouble starting. I, I don't know many editing jobs that I've been on that have had great openings first time around.
It's [00:17:00] always the beginning that probably needs the most work, you know, in that first draft. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. But I think that's because that's the most difficult part. It's like, how do you start? How do you introduce characters? How do you do, you're focusing too much on the how to, how do I open a book?
How do I keep people interested? Instead, think again and say where does the story start? How do I start as close to that as possible? And if there are things that need to be explained, then there'll be explained. If you need introduction of a character, I don't think it's a problem to have the character on stage and have them doing something and discover about them.
I think there are ways of doing that. So I think, concentrating too much on, Oh, I need my audience to know this. Before the story starts. [00:18:00] Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. I'm a fan of some of the flashback types of ways to fill in information as well, right? Like kind of starting off in the middle of something, but then kind of jumping back to say, okay, now who is this person?
Where did they come from? And kind of jumping back to the action and kind of jumping out and talking about another person or another, another situation. Right. So you see that all the time in TV. Oh yeah. Yeah. All the time in TV.
Christina: Yeah. In TV it is much easier because it's a visual medium and you're seeing the flashbacks books. It is harder. You want a definite balance. You don't want too many flashbacks because then that's, disorienting, yeah, disorienting jumping back and forth and, and can be, confusing again. I think sometimes it's okay. Not to know something, not to know who somebody is for the story, not to necessarily.
And again, it's also it's a little bit murky with the show versus tell, [00:19:00] because if you're truly showing, then you're not giving a flashback because a flashback tends to be tell. So, but it can be a good tell and you can, I mean, in the action of the flashback, make it a show, but you're also telling the audience something that they need to know.
So it is strictly a tell. So, like I said, it's a murky, yeah, it's a murky area there.
Matt: Nice. Well, excellent. So let's think about if we were going to leave people with kind of one hot tip to try out or one. Maybe a challenge to try for this week based on what we've just talked about. What would we give them?
Christina: I, again, I'm a fan of that mystery box. So homework number one, go find that video on YouTube. And I don't know if it's JJ Abrams, but just put in Ted talk mystery box. I think [00:20:00] that's the title. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. I'm a big fan of that. So the challenge that I would give, the audience is figure out one thing about your character that you don't want the audience to know immediately.
But yet, be dropping some of those clues that keeps them going, that keeps them guessing, just figure out one thing, one thing to do.
Matt: One thing in service of the story. Yep.
Christina: Yes. I love that. In service of the story.
Matt: Because it'd be easy to say. My one thing that I don't want the readers to know is that my character likes pink socks.
Yeah. And if it doesn't really play a part in the story, who cares, right? So ask yourself, here's a good filter. What's the point? Yes,
Christina: exactly. What's the point of them not knowing?
Matt: Awesome. Well, very good. Well, I think we've talked a lot [00:21:00] today about some good tips and just general thoughts about how to be successful with writing and.
Some of the ways others go about it. And again, as you said, some of the stuff that even we talk about is going to resonate with you and some of it won't and that's okay. We're not here to tell you that, we are the foremost experts of all of this. Although Tina really is, so you should listen to her.
But. We, we do try to help out as we can. So that is why we're here. Take,
Christina: take what resonates and leave all the rest.
Matt: There you go. Love it. Well, very good, my dear. And that is our show for this week. Where can they find more if they want more? Tina?
Christina: I am on Instagram usually daily. It can be found there.
You can DM me. You can, stop by and say hi or email me at Christina at book matchmaker. com. Where can they find you, Mr. Matt? All
Matt: my stuff, all the goodies, found at cassem. omg. lol. That's C A [00:22:00] S S E M dot O M G dot L O L. All right, well, until next time, bye!
Christina: Bye!