What writing process should I use to produce the kind of writing I want?
I want to achieve the following:
- To produce a work that is well-organized and full of substance.
- To produce a work in which each thought flows smoothly to the next.
- To produce a work that is perfectly clear and coherent.
- To produce a work that has poetic cadence or prose rhythm, comparable to that of the King James Bible or some other rhythmical work.
I have often tried writing sentences and revising as I go, trying to apply few rules about metrical feet, being dissatisfied with the sound, not having barely anything written, and finally giving up.
There seems to be rules for clarity. I have a book on it and it is not difficult to apply. But there are no rules for prose rhythm, and before I can ever get my thoughts out I have already tried rearranging words and looking up words in a thesaurus and given up.
But I did write something with good prose rhythm once five years ago. I don’t have it anymore, unfortunately. So I know that at least I had the ability to write in the rhythm that that piece had.
While I agree that most of these things cannot be expected out of a first draft (instead being the valuable fruits of th …
7y ago
Best writing advice I ever got was a mix of advice from both a published author as well as my husband; write at random. …
7y ago
You basically have two options: 1. Write the first draft, edit, edit, edit 2. Outline, write the first draft, edit, edi …
7y ago
I'm going to dissent from the spin straw into gold argument that others have made. It's not that I don't see merit in it …
7y ago
1) You're trying to write your final polished draft on your first shot. It won't happen. Focus on one goal at a time. Fi …
7y ago
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Best writing advice I ever got was a mix of advice from both a published author as well as my husband; write at random. Write whatever scene from your story pops into your head, beginning, middle, possible ending. Doesn't matter, just get it down before you lose it. It's a lot more fun and easy that way. But I do recommend keeping a log of characters, languages and their translations, and locations.
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While I agree that most of these things cannot be expected out of a first draft (instead being the valuable fruits of the revision process), reading problematic sentences aloud should be a useful tool when trying to understand the flow of a paragraph you've written. The only other thing that always helps is a fundamental grasp of poetry.
But the first draft is there for you to get all of the content on paper, rhythm and diction are less important.
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You basically have two options:
- Write the first draft, edit, edit, edit
- Outline, write the first draft, edit, edit, edit (but possibly a bit less editing than in 1).
And, as Lauren Ipsum already has mentioned: allow yourself to suck. Your motto should be: "I'll fix it in editing... moving on!"
With respect to your requirements 1-4. In whose opinion? You could possibly benefit from using beta readers and/or a critique partner to figure out how your text stand up to those requirements.
Apart from that, it's a question of your capability and experience... and perhaps what you've read before... There are no shortcuts I've heard of...
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I'm going to dissent from the spin straw into gold argument that others have made. It's not that I don't see merit in it, its just that I think prose rhythm is a heard thing, by which I mean that some people hear it in what they read and some do not, and that some writers hear is in their heads as they compose and some do not.
For those who hear it, it is incomprehensible how someone could write an obviously arrhythmic sentence. Such as sentence would be as painfully and obviously wrong as one with patent grammatical flaws. The rhythmic property of the sentence forms in the mind in the first moment of creation: the sentence does not feel right in the mind and on the tongue until the rhythm is there. To a writer who works like this, there is no such thing as an arrhythmic sentence, just an unfinished sentence that is not ready to write down yet.
This being the case, though, I am not sure that there is a way for an arrhythmic writer to become a rhythmic writer. If you are hearing the rhythm as you write, you cannot help but write rhythmically. If you are not hearing it as you write, I don't think you could ever achieve the effect in revision.
This is not to say that a rhythmic writer won't improve the rhythm of their prose in revision. But I don't think they would ever think of this as an "add rhythm" step. It would simply be a case of reading a sentence and feeling it was wrong or ugly and of replacing it with something better -- and it being better mostly because it sounded better in their heads, not because they mechanically applied some axiom of rhythm to it.
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1) You're trying to write your final polished draft on your first shot. It won't happen. Focus on one goal at a time. First determine your substance. Then organize it. Then write it. Never mind how it sounds. Just get it on paper. Your inner editor is becoming an inner censor. You can fix it later. Give yourself permission to suck.
2) "Clear and coherent" is in the mind of the reader. You can do your best, but there are no guarantees.
3) Are you trying to write prose or poetry? They have different rules. You can fine-tune some phrasing in prose, but it's not about the sprung rhythm of the text.
4) The poetic rendering of the KJV Bible is in opposition to "clear and coherent." You can aim for clear, or you can aim for poetic and lovely, but aiming for both at the same time will just make you shoot yourself in the foot.
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