My Process (1 of 3) Notes & Theme
I’m really trying to stick to my plan for sharing my writing process on here but recently I’ve been quite distracted…
See, it’s the beginning of mushroom season! And that means (free) morels! O’ succulent morchella… It’s like Easter all month long. If you’ve never done it, I really recommend mushroom hunting. Perhaps that’s the first step in my writing process - even before the idea stage. The meditation of wandering the woods. But that’s a whole other blog altogether.
First, a little disclaimer:
When I started this weblog - in addition to providing news about my work - it was kind of a public FAQ reference to offset the number of emails I used to get asking me about my techniques. Back in the day those questions of technique mostly concerned animation production. These days, however, I tend to be talking writing with people more than anything else.
It’s getting harder for me to hide behind mere aspirant status in this field but none the less I delve into the following with some hesitation… I’m an autodidact. Which isn’t to say I haven’t spent my share of time reading blogs like this one, just that I have no formal training in this field. So as usual around here the tips I’m sharing are really just my personal process. I’ll leave the how-to guides to the professional educators and crackpots.
Okay, that said, let me jump in:
Whether it’s walking through the woods or driving down a lonely highway my stories begin with that initial spark. The idea.
What’s the idea? Could be anything. Could be a concept, could be a character could simply be something indefinable that I have to start writing about just to explore further.
When I come about an idea that I can’t shake then my next step is fairly simple: I write it down. I open a text doc on the ol’ ‘puter and just write down exactly what the idea is. Sometimes these text docs sit around for years. If, however, I’m really hooked in by the idea then I flesh it out a bit in this note taking form. These are just plain speak, personal notes that would probably be incomprehensible to anybody else.
This is also customarily my research phase. If the idea takes me somewhere that I have little knowledge about - like satellites - then I do some background. This may seem a little like a no-brainer but I’m including everything here for the sake of thoroughness. Once upon a time I may have skipped the note taking stage. However, I’m getting older now and a little more afraid of letting anything incubate for too long in my head for fear of losing it to some burned out synapses.
The note taking process isn’t just good for recording purposes it also helps me start putting together the story’s circulatory system. In broad strokes I start figuring out the stories special moments… You know those moments.
The next thing I like to do once the notes are coming along is identify a theme. Distilled down to one phrase, maybe one word, what’s this story about? Friendship? Finding one’s place in the world? Jealousy? Good vs. evil? With Minushi, for example, my theme could have been summed up as “the meaning of family”. Granted Minushi has a lot of themes (political, literary, philosophical) but the theme that encapsulates the core of the story was “family”.
I put this theme phrase at the top of my notes doc. It serves as a reminder to me throughout the rest of the writing process not to stray from the heart of the story.
The idea opens up the floor to notes and research which allows me to figure out my theme. The heart of the story and its circulatory system are coming together (I guess I’m going for an anatomy type of metaphor on this one). Next up: The skeleton…
May 8th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
“I put this theme phrase at the top of my notes doc. It serves as a reminder to me throughout the rest of the writing process not to stray from the heart of the story.”
I do the exact same thing for songs. Absolutely essential, I think!
Jeff