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Old 02-02-2010, 11:13 PM   #6
Steven Lake
Sci-Fi Author
Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Steven Lake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
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Well, I tend to rush through the first time anyways, not so much intentionally, but rather that the idea is coming faster than I can write it down. So as long as I get the core of the story down, then I can nitpick it to death until its perfect, even if I do have to do a little post apocalyptic cleanup afterwards. ^_^ I've also noticed that, while I have the whole story plotted out and outlined, as I go along and the story matures, things that wouldn't otherwise come out in the plot layout end up appearing later on. Especially as I start feeling out the characters and exploring them. I've actually allowed the story to sorta steer itself at times, causing me to chuck out large parts of my plot and rewriting it to suit the newer story flow, as it tends to work better than the original idea. It's weird how it works like that, but if I get a killer story out of it, I'm willing to let the story guide me a bit in my writing. Heck, I've seen some pretty amazing things come out of my stories that way.

Case in point. In book 2 of the Earthfleet series, there's this one huge colony ship they pass on the way in to Sebius. That started out as just a passing mention with a little bit of history and some explanation of the race that occupied it, but no interest in exploring it further. But as the story went further, I actually drew them in and that ship that started out as just a passing interest became an important plot element. So I guess that some of the carnage comes from the fact that the story and plot mature as I write, because I tend to explore a bit as I flesh out the story.

I've had other times where I've written something in, and the story went an entirely different direction than what I expected, thus rendering that little tidbit moot. So it ended up being dropped in later drafts. Right now I'm probably making you cringe, as that's not your way to do writing, but it's a system that works incredibly well for me. It also forces me to dive deeper into the scenes and the characters, allowing me, and in some ways forcing me, to dig in elbow deep and pull out some very interesting things that would otherwise not have come to the top had I taken it from another approach.

So in short, I think this would be best described as "living the story" rather than simply writing it where you're more the scribe than the author. And I'm not knocking your way of writing in the slightest, because each person finds a slightly different way that works best for them, and no two styles or methods are identical.
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