My Five-Phase Creative Writing Process

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, then you probably know by now that I have a tendency to ramble on about my various creative processes, so I’ll try to keep this article as brief as I can. Because if I don’t, we’re going to end up with an e-book length screed on our hands and I’d rather not have to do that. Instead, I’m going to list the basic steps in my Five Phase Writing Process and elaborate on each of them one by one.

Intro

Like many people, I struggled with writing novel length-works for a number of years and the drafts where I did manage to sweat it out until the conclusion felt horribly unsatisfying and took forever to write. So I read (and continue to read) countless craft of writing books and this not only helped me pinpoint what my various hang-ups and bottlenecks were but how to address them within my own writing process. Years of trial and error eventually brought me to a five-phase process that allowed me to tackle each of my writing hurdles one document and/or draft at a time instead of having to contend with all of my insecurities at once. It is my hope that someone who is also struggling to see a major writing project through will see something in my process that helps them develop one that works for them.

Note that I primarily developed this process for writing novels (aimed towards genre fiction rather than literary) but I suppose you could apply it to novellas, novelettes, and possibly short stories if you happen to be good at cramming in a lot of plot in a short amount of space. Also, I write using Microsoft Word but I know not everyone does, so that’s why I’m leaving out any further references to software (it is my hope that this process can apply to whatever you use to write).

The Five Phases (and suggested reading)

1. Development
• “The Snowflake Method” by Randy Ingermanson
2. Plot Outline
3. Non-Prose Alpha Draft (NPAD)
• “Tell, Don’t Show” by James Lofquist
4. Complete Draft
• “Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction” by Marcy Kennedy
• “Writing Dazzling Dialogue” by James Scott Bell
5. Proofing and Editing
• “Grammar for Fiction Writers” by Marcy Kennedy
• “Slow Your Prose” by James W. Lewis

Another note: there are likely objectively better examples out there than the books I listed, but I wanted to keep the suggested reading selections in this article on the shorter side. Plus, there are still a bunch more craft of writing books that are in my TBR pile. I’ll probably sit down one day and do a whole post about the books that taught me a lot about writing, but for now, just check out the six I listed above. It won’t take long to read them all and they contain a lot of helpful hints.

Phase One: The Development Phase

Think of this as your "idea notebook" phase. Create a blank sheet called something like <Book Title>_Dev Doc and just start jotting down things like:

• Your overall vision, what you want this story to be
• Influences (as you work on your dev docs, read as many non-fiction books related to this story/its setting or other novels in a similar genre as you can as research)
• Character descriptions and backstories
• Setting/lore information
• Exposition (what happened leading up to the events in which this novel takes place)
• Anything else that springs to mind. Anything at all.

Phase One culminates in one particular section of the Dev Doc that I like to call the Four-Part Plot Synopsis. That’s where you try to summarize the story in four paragraphs/bullet points with each one representing one-quarter of your story, with each of the first three quarters culminating in a Disaster - a major turning points for the protagonists, with each one more severe than the last. I’ll do a random example to show you exactly what I mean:

Generic McHero’s Journey in The Land of Clichés - Plot Synopsis:

·         Part 1: Hero is living his best life when Dark Lord’s men attack his village. Hero is the only survivor and goes on the run, where he struggles to survive. He meets an old wizard who teaches him stuff. Together, they thwart one of Dark Lord’s henchmen in an attempt to retrieve Powerful MacGuffin.

o   Disaster 1: The MacGuffin gets stolen by a dragon who flies off with it to his nest.

·         Part 2: Hero and Wizard meet new allies and enemies as they attempt to track down the dragon. They have to break into one of the Dark Lord’s dungeons to rescue an alchemist who knows how to make a sedative powerful enough to knock out a dragon long enough to retrieve the MacGuffin from its horde.

o   Disaster 2: In their attempt to flee the dungeon with the alchemist, the Wizard is hurt and has to sacrifice himself so that the others can get away. The Hero is devastated.

·         Part 3: The Hero is sad and goes on a bender, but his friends convince him to resume his quest and get revenge on the Dark Lord. They eventually retrieve the Powerful MacGuffin from the dragon’s lair even though the sedatives wear off quicker than expected (due to their use of inferior ingredients).

o   Disaster 3: The Dark Lord shows up and defeats the Hero, taking the Powerful MacGuffin for himself. The Hero is at death’s door and all is seemingly lost.

·         Part 4: The heroes redouble their efforts against the Dark Lord as the Hero recovers from his wounds and finally learns the truth about himself that the Wizard tried to open his eyes to, but until now, his Fatal Flaws had gotten in the way. The final battle and lead-up to the confrontation between the Hero and the Dark Lord, in which the Hero narrowly wins.The Land of Clichés is now free from tyranny and everyone drinks themselves stupid while Old Wizard looks down from the clouds and nods approvingly. The end.

This probably seems like a lot to ask at this stage, but it’s perfectly reasonable for your disasters and major plot points to change with each successive phase (you’ll find that my Five Phase method is flexible in that regard). Still, this part is important because it gives you something to build towards during Phase Two.

Phase Two: The Chapter-by-Chapter Plot Outline

Create a new document (<Book Title>_Plot Outline) and start with chapter 1 (or your prologue, if that’s something you’re into) and write a brief, several paragraph summary of the events of that chapter. This is where you really let your creativity fly as you figure out what happens in your story, what your major plot points are, and what developments happen along the way without getting hung up on any minor details since there will be plenty of time for that in the phases to come. Don’t be surprised if your Plot Outline ends up being 10,000-15,000 words long, since that is what mine usually are.

I advise figuring out roughly how many chapters are in your novel before you start and creating the headers for each one ahead of time and then populating them. Your total number of chapters will probably change as you progress through this phase (and especially the next two), but for now, get an idea of how many chapters will get you to Disaster 1 in Part 1, Disaster 2 in Part 2, Disaster 3 in Part 3, and the Ending in Part 4.

The plot outline is about figuring out what happens in your novel while the next phase is about determining exactly how it happens.

Phase Three: The Non-Prose Alpha Draft (NPAD)

When the Plot Outline is complete, make a copy of it and rename it “<Book Title>_NPAD”. The Non-Prose Alpha Draft is where you further expand what you have written in the Plot Outline, expanding the paragraphs into pages as you begin to fill in details on exactly how the scenes play out. The settings, the actions, the weather, what characters talk about, all of that stuff gets filled in here. The NPAD contains all the details and descriptions you might find (and then some) in a complete draft of a novel but it intentionally breaks the golden rule of fiction writing: “show, don’t tell”. The NPAD turns this rule on its head and compels you to write your entire novel in “tells” rather than “shows.”

Here is where you should probably pause and read “Tell, Don’t Show” by James Lofquist because he explains this way better than I can. But it’s a short book that really opened up my eyes and changed the way I approach writing in a way that few other craft of writing books ever have.

This is what I like to consider the first “real” draft (an Alpha draft, if you will), even if it isn’t written like something you would give someone to else as it is admittedly still more outline than it is manuscript. It’s highly likely that you’ll continue to feel the words flowing as the process of writing the NPAD will be unencumbered by the struggle many often face when they give in to the urge to try and craft halfway decent prose and dialogue between characters while they’re still working the story out for themselves. Don’t be surprised if the scenes continue to change, new ideas pop into your head, the number of chapters expands or contracts. Again, that’s fine and there’s no need to start over, because your project will continue to evolve with each successive phase.

My NPADs are usually between 35,000-40,000+ words if I’m lucky. Some are much, much longer.

Phase Four: The Complete Draft

Now is the penultimate and toughest (at least for me) phase, wherein you make a copy of your completed NPAD and change the name to <Book Title>_Complete Draft and turn all the “tells” into “shows”. Basically, you’ve finally reached the part where you’re forced to make your book actually read like a book. But since this is still a draft, try not to agonize too hard over your descriptions and dialogue, since there’s still one more phase to go. You might also find that certain scenes need added/removed, one chapter might need to be split into two or even three, you find out that something just doesn’t work…again, that’s fine. That’s why the process has multiple phases, after all. Soldier on. It’s fine if you finish with a rough, scrappy little draft. Just finish!

Usually at this point, I finally add dialogue in place of the scenes where I just described (in the previous phases) what the characters are talking about and the direction of their conversation, but if you already have rudimentary exchanges and/or snippets of dialogue from the NPAD, that’s fine too.

Phase Five: Proofreading and Editing

This is the part that a lot of people dread, but honestly, I find that I like going back and fixing/rewriting things after a bit of a cooling off period. And a cooling off period of a couple days (or even a week or two, it’s up to you) between Phase Four and Five is beneficial as it allows you to take in the draft with a relatively fresh pair of eyes, making you better able to spot bits of prose that might be dumb, clunky, or just plain awkward (as well as pick out patterns that you didn’t notice before that makes your writing predictable and cumbersome).

I don’t have much to say on this except that I would recommend reading and taking notes on as many books on self-editing and crafting evocative prose as you can, then taking those notes and making your own checklist of grammar and prose-related pitfalls to watch out for as you go line by line through your complete draft (I would again copy the file and rename it as something like <Book Title>_Final Draft). Or you could just hire an editor, but even if you do have the money to go that route, I would still go through at least one round of intensive self-editing.

Conclusion

No conclusion, this article has gone on long enough already and I have a novel to get back to.