Seat of the pants vs snowflakes
Today I signed up to NaNoWriMo and it’s got me thinking about how I work so this post is all about writing styles. I don’t mean whether you write informally or in the third person or whatever. I’m talking about the approach you take.
Is writing a novel, article or poem a spontaneous act or do you prefer to plan it out like a military operation?
There are merits to both of these styles and I can remember being a time poor student, hashing out my essays in one fell swoop overnight and – miraculously- getting a decent grade for them! One of my best poems was written off the cuff with no particular thought. I just listened to a piece of music and I reacted to it.
With novels and functional writing such as web copy or advertising leaflets it is harder to take this ’seat of the pants’ approach. The novel takes a long time to write and you need to plan a suitable structure to make sure it remains interesting and coherent. With functional writing, every word has a purpose and it’s important not to deviate from or muddle the messages.
Yesterday I read an article about the snowflake approach. Some of the steps are ones I already employ myself when writing novels and some of them seemed a bit like overkill but it’s a good example of how you can start to plan your work and expand on the initial ideas.
It is the expansion that’s often the trickiest part for me. At school so many essays came back to me with the words “could expand more on these ideas”. As an adult I often get stuck fleshing out the details between ‘great idea’ and a novel or functional piece of copy so it’s useful to have a tried and tested method to help.
You can find out more about my own method at Organising Writing. In the meantime I’ll try and keep you updated with my NaNoWriMo progress! You can also follow me on Twitter @Pictors_Pen.
- Random or planned? Kathryn Wright
