So I have now started my second round of beta readers this week. While waiting for their feedback, I continue to write in Black Bird. Since I’ve started writing another story, I now remember some of the process when I was writing Charms. It’s sort of funny how you don’t remember until you go through it again.
Anyway, I find dialogue to be one of the easiest things for me to write. When I first wrote Charms I had difficulty with show vs tell. Describing a scene in a way that the reader can see it for themselves vs just telling them what’s in the scene. After going through my first round of beta readers and editor for Charms, I have noticed a difference in my writing for Black Bird. I try to show the scene more than just telling.
I’m also conscious of the words I use. I’m trying to put more of a variety in Black Bird’s first draft. While writing Charms I saw that I would use quite a few of the same words to describe things and scenes. Starting sentences with the same words and descriptions and using certain words often. So I now consider how I start sentences and what words I used. Using other words that mean the same thing to give more than just using the same word over and over.
When it comes down to it, I think I suck at writing romance and fight scenes. In Charms I had a subplot of romance while the main plot was action adventure. I love action adventure stories and I wanted to write every detail of the fight. But the problems were that I would just tell how the fight went and it also took away from the story. After many edits and some great advice, I believe it improved in Charms but just this week I was having issues writing a fight scene in Black Bird. It could have been I was just too much in my head during the process but I still figured it out so no worries there. Now with romance, that is my weakness in writing. I don’t read romance books and I don’t watch too many romances either. So I needed all the help I could get with that.
Just like in Charms I am writing in 3rd person past tense for Black Bird and an issue I had was mix present and past tense. The only explanation I have is that I didn’t notice it and the more I edited my story the more blind I became to it. I had read and re-read my story so many times that I couldn’t notice the flaws in it, which is a good reason to get beta readers before the editor.
Another thing I do when writing is acting out the scenes. It sounds weird, but it helps cause I get to hear it out loud and can tell if it works. It’s embarrassing so I do it when I’m alone. Writing this makes it sound even more weird.
I might explain more of my writing process in the future, but now I’m curious of the writing process of my fellow authors. Tell me how you guys write your stories.