A Procrastinating Ramble About My Writing Process

I’m staring at the newly fleshed out outline of my Romance Writer’s Crash Course (hopefully coming soon), as well as the latest draft of When the Snow Falls, and I’m procrastinating. So of course I’m going to work on neither of those things and tell you all about my writing process instead because of course I fucking am—ha!

My writing process starts with an idea. I mean, of course it starts with an idea, but I really want you to read that in the most dramatic voice you can muster. I’m nothing if not a princess who loves her some drama.

But seriously, my ideas are usually less of a story idea and more of a snippet of a story. I’ll envision a specific scene or the way a particular trope would be fun to play with. Just recently, I woke up from a dream with a fantastic idea firmly planted in my mind, and it’s everything I can do right now to keep working on my current project and not abandon it for the newest shiny thing.

Once I have an idea of what should happen at some point in the story, I work backwards from there to figure out who my main characters are. I want their motivations and thoughts and feelings to all make sense, so I think a lot about the why behind the plot points of my story. I imagine they’re friends of mine with all of the strengths and weaknesses of real people.

Perfect stories are boring, and perfect people are dull.

I want neither in my books.

I have a template saved in my Google Docs that I use to flesh out my idea, the characters, and ultimately my story outline. At this point in my process, I’ve already duplicated that template and started filling it in. I get as detailed as possible when it comes to who my characters are, their backstory and motivations, what drives them, what stalls them completely, and most importantly, their wants versus their needs.

I say that is the most important because that’s the thing that I’ll use to propel their arc forward in my story. Think of Disney’s Hercules. Hercules wants to prove himself worth of being a god and so sets out to become the people’s hero, but what he needs is to realize that selflessness and sacrifice is what makes true heroes. Okay, I’m kind of butchering the analogy, but I hope you still understand what I mean.

Now, I’d love to say that I’m a balance between a planner and a pantser, a combination of someone who plans out their book and someone who allows the story to evolve more organically as they write. I’m not sure why I like the idea of being that kind of writer, but alas, I do.

No, instead I sit firmly on the planner side of this fence.

That doesn’t mean that I will never add scenes or events or plot points to my story once the outline is finished. I frequently do actually. However, it’s not something I intend to do. It happens when it needs to happen.

In my template, I even have each story beat broken down along with when in the book it should be. I’ll include both the word count and the percent for each beat. I’ll never prioritize sticking to this over letting the story flow naturally, but it does help me make sure that my pacing is on point and I don’t end up with a book that’s half the length of a typical romance book with no idea how in the world I’ll add in enough to fill it out.

Once I move into outline mode, I work with both post-it notes and my computer in tandem. I plan out the major beats of the story—the inciting incident, the main conflict, the dark night of the soul, that kind of thing. That gets jotted into my outline and on post-it notes. Then I put those notes in a row on the floor to serve as column headings.

Next, I like to write out all of the important plot points, bit of dialogue, etc. on post-in notes and lay them out on the floor in these columns. These are all of the things that are happing either in that pivotal moment or as part of that section of the story.

For example, under the “Dark Night of the Soul” heading when I was writing Dream of Me, I made notes about what Nick was doing after the major conflict happened. He left town, he ended up flirting with someone at a bar, and he almost made the worst mistake of his life taking her back to his hotel room.

I really like the visual aspect of being able to see the story beats all laid out, and I benefit from the ability to rearrange things as needed. Sometimes I’ll find that a certain type of encounter doesn’t work well so early in the story, and I can easily see the issue and move the scene around before my outline is too dependent on it.

Once I’m settled on all of the major points of the story, I’ll input that all into my outline. Usually, I’ll futz around with it some more to make sure I’m pacing my story nicely, and I’ll inevitably think of some bits of dialogue I want to use, so that gets added in.

Finally, I’m ready to really start fleshing out my outline. Here I work chronologically so my brain stays on the right track. I will go through the entire outline from top to bottom mapping out everything that should happen on a more granular level. If I think of an interesting turn of phrase or character conversation, I’ll take the time to map out how that should go. I’ll even make notes about how my characters are feeling, what they’re thinking about, and what they may be struggling with. This helps me create a character arc that feels really satisfying. Because I’m still looking at everything from a big picture perspective, it’s easier for me to see their progress over time, and I can make sure it’s measured and makes sense for their story.

I’ll typically go through the outline several times before I’m fully satisfied. There isn’t really a defined moment when it’s technically completed, but I know it’s done when I can have my outline pulled up alongside my working draft and write directly from the outline without having to stop and check where I’m at in my story. It makes it much easier for me to expend my creativity in the moment on the actual story instead of juggling both the story and the structure together. More than that, my story end up being more cohesive even though I’m constantly picking up and putting down my work, something that’s especially good if you’re like me and trying to write when you’re also a mother with children who frequently interrupt your writing time.

Now, editing and rewrites and everything that goes with that is a whole other deal, so this is far from the entire process I follow to get a book ready to publish, but as far as writing itself goes, that’s pretty much my flow.

It’s an amalgamation of tips I’ve collected from other authors over the years, professional advice, personal preferences, and even some research paper education from all the way back in middle school. In my opinion, there isn’t really one perfect way to write a book. There’s just the way that’s perfect for you. If any of this procrastination fueled behind-the-scenes rambling helps you develop or refine your writing process (or even if it was simply a mildly entertaining romp), I’ll take that as a win.

Now, I’ve got a book to get back to trying to write. Stop trying to distract me, geez.