Can I avoid free writing?
We write the best way, not when trying to perfect every sentence as we write our first draft, but when writing down our thoughts and not revising them till we finish that draft. Now in some books I have read, the authors advises their readers to use free writing to come up with material for their works. But I cannot imagine myself to use free writing, because it is not easy for me to write without stopping. I think I need to write more slowly, setting down only those thoughts that are meaningful, and revising those thoughts that are not what I intended them to be, not to make them clear or graceful, but to make their meaning precise.
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There is story development and there is narration. You need to compose a story before you can narrate it. Some people are naturals at story development. For them the story flows so naturally that they can focus on narration from the moment they start writing.
Some people struggle with story development. Some address this with planning and outlines. Some do the story development in their heads before they start narrating. And some start scribbling down whatever comes into their heads and hope a story thread will emerge from it. This is what so called free writing is about.
Some people are naturals at narration. For them, the narrative flow emerges more or less intact in the first draft. For others, constructing a working narrative is a laborious process of many revisions. Don't expect your free writing story development to produce a great narrative. And don't confuse that process with the behavior of people who are both naturals at story and naturals at narration and can get a good first draft done first time out.
If free writing is your method for story generation, then don't worry about the writing details because this is not you first draft of the narrative, it is merely story generation. Be prepared (indeed, work with the full intention) to throw the entire thing away once you have found your story shape, and then begin the task of narration over from the beginning.
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For most, that sort of deliberation is best done later, in edits or second drafts. However, if you'd like a way to force yourself to maintain a slower pace and think over words more before the first time you write them down, I've found that writing by hand is very valuable for that. It slows down the pace of your writing so that your mind can think of more different permutations of the words you have yet to write down.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28981. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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