this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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What's a preconception you had about writing that was dispelled as you became more experienced? (self.writing)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by IonAddis to c/writing
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It could be something like, "I thought XYZ was easy and ABC was hard, but--"

Or it could be something where you thought you HAD to do something one way (organize, use a certain program, write in a certain POV, etc), but you ended up handling it in a fashion that was different once you became experienced enough to see things differently.

What preconception was dashed as you grew in experience and skill?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought outlines were boring. I thought they would constrain me, and I still don't use outlines for shorter exercises, but I'm finally thinking that it might be nice to have a road map of major events in my next novel.

I've realized I'm not actually bound to the outline but each step offers an unlimited amount of opportunities, and seeing them all laid out before I flesh everything out will make getting from point to point easier and give my brain something to bind together and work on in the backifb my mind when I'm not actively writing, which hopefully will make my editing a little less chaotic.

[–] IonAddis 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My relationship with outlines has changed as I've gotten older and have moved onto a different leg of my journey as a writer.

I absolutely didn't outline when younger. And I DON'T think that was wrong for me. I have some strong "rules follower" tendencies, and at that age I very much saw an "outline" as an immutable set of rules to follow.

I absolutely hated outlines--and I think it's because I had an instinctive understanding that if I gave into my rules-following nature so early, it'd cripple my writing. I was so new to writing I didn't know my limits or the shape of what sort of writing I COULD do, so to map that out, I had to explore out in the "wilds" to see for myself why one thing worked and why the other didn't. I had to tinker. I had to mess around, and fail, and succeed, and fail.

But because my inner push to follow "rules" as so strong at that age, I just kind of knew if I did outlines, it would cut me off from a lot of possibilities for that tinkering and exploration because my own brain would prevent me from erasing parts of the outline and redoing them if I got "stuck". I was very, very prone to fixating on stuff if I felt there was a rule related to it that I HAD to follow. And that's a liability with writing.

So I kind of brain-hacked my way around that part of my own nature. I knew my brain had a certain problem, so I went around it.

It's really only after I've truly learned what my abilities and limits are (by spending decades and millions of words exploring those limits) that outlining has become useful. But I really, really needed the foundation of KNOWING my own abilities to be in place first before outlines became useful.

So I don't "regret" or feel like I did something "wrong" to avoid outlines when younger. I think at the time I knew exactly how I needed to nurture my writing, even if it ran counter to popular advice (which often includes "outline").

But now that I'm in a different part of my journey, I'm much more able to utilize outlines without the "rules-following" part of my brain hyper-focusing on the rule and getting stuck in a rut or hole.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's nice that you know where you are in your journey now.

I also feel no regret for the eschewing outlines as long as I did(actually up until today, I feel differently about them but haven't taken the plunge yet), it's been working for me fine.

But it'll be at least interesting to pivot and try out an outline to see how that affects longer stories that I want to be more cohesive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don't actually have define everything. You don't even need to name your characters if you don't feel like it, just refer to them as their roles, like princess, knight, maid, etc. Naming thing is so hard.

I got it from Goblin Slayer, but its the same thing in TF2.

[–] IonAddis 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I've definitely found naming things can be a much smaller part of the picture nowadays for me than it used to be.

It can still be important--from a "style" perspective, you end up with different results if you choose different naming schemes, and "not naming things" is a naming scheme in its own right. But I don't obsess over names at the start anymore, not like I used to. They sort of trickle in after I'm about 20k words into a novel. So I go back and update the placeholders as I figure things out.

Titles are saved for the very end, when I fully know the shape of my story.