Thus far, I haven't really gotten into my writing process.  I mean, I've touched on it, but I haven't gone over how I write a story from start to finish.  It's something that I do think about it, especially in the context of this blog, but then, I hastily dismiss it and move on to other things.  Like a lot of writers, I hold the superstition that if you talk about an unfinished work, you'll lose that spark of inspiration and never finish the story.  That's one of the reasons I'm a bit dismissive in the comments with the storyline itself.  Thankfully, there are plenty of people who hate spoilers, so I can get away with not saying anything out of fear of starting a riot.

With that said, I think this is the time to get into how I come up with my stories, when I chose to write them, and hopefully get more details in my style and voice.  This will probably be more rambling.

I've been a storyteller since I was a little kid.  I couldn't play with my toys without having some kind of story or scenario they were engaged in.  As I grew older, I started to write these things down, keeping them to myself, as I didn't think anyone would like them.  Once I got into the 8th grade, however, I started sharing a little bit with friends and in class assignments.  Due to having dyslexia and ADHD (a mild case of it, comparatively), reading was never something I could really manage.  I have never been on any medications for my learning disabilities, as my parents were against it, and at the time, there were no names for my conditions, so the public school system was not helpful in the slightest for people like me, which made me self-conscious, so with only the few exceptions I mentioned already, I continued to keep my writing to myself.

Story ideas just come to me.  I can't explain it.  I do know it's a muscle that needs to be worked and maintained, or you'll lose it.  Ideas can literally come from anywhere.  Sometimes a conversation or just a word or phrase can bring about a seed.  Music is also another source I've utilized from time to time.  When I was much younger, I wrote a script based on the song "Hotel California" by Eagles.  It followed the lyrical narrative of the song as if it was literal instead of metaphorical.  The saying, "Write what you know," is a great start.  My first short story was based in my school and the characters were adult versions of my friends and other classmates.  Thicker Than Water, as mentioned multiple times in the comments and, I believe, this blog is very loosely based on real events and people to help me process personal issues.

Once I a seed of inspiration, I just let it sit in my head.  I play with it, stretching it, molding it, and exploring the possibilities.  I treat it like a little kid playing with clay.  If it's a line of dialogue, I think of a context in which it could be used, who might say it, who might be hearing it and how they may react.  If it's a setting/location, I would think of it's history, significance, population, and physical description.  If it's a person, I think of personality and voice before physical description.  I want their physical characteristics to reflect their personality verses trying to mold their character into their body.  Kenny is a great example of this.  He's soft spoken, nerdy and mousy in personality, and his physical description matches this personality, which helps the ready visualize him with minimal descriptions.

Most of the seeds die before they're planted.  Either they just don't stick as ideas, in the end not very good, or sometimes just too ambitious for me take on.  I'm aware of my own limitations as a writer.  Having done this for a long time, I know my limits and comfort level with certain topics.  I will try to stretch outside of my areas just to see how far I've grown, but most of those just fail after less than 100 pages.

I don't really keep a journal.  I've tried in the past, but my ADHD just prevents me from sticking with it.  Instead, how I compensate is to keep it in my head.  If the idea is good enough to push me to type it up, I'll start the story.  If I forget about it, then it wasn't interesting enough for me to pursue it, which means it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere, anyway.

When I do write, I prefer to write late at night just before bed.  I have insomnia, and it's usually sparked by my brain refusing to shut down, so writing at that time, allows me to get out of my head the thing(s) that would keep me awake all night, anyway.  I try to type at least four pages at a time, which is roughly one chapter for me.  I don't hold myself to that standard, nor do I write every single night, but when I do dedicate the time, that's my goal.  If I go over my goal, all the better, as long as I'm not screwing myself over the next day with lack of sleep.

Sometimes, I'll listen to music in the background to help my pacing, setting a particular mood, adding inspiration to a scene or just to drown out other noises.  I cannot write while someone else it talking, so no podcasts, documentaries or other conversational inputs.  My brain will try to latch onto them instead of focusing on the story.  I also take breaks to reflect on what I've written and I will rarely edit while writing.  If you're someone who can successfully edit while writing, more power to you; however, if you're someone who finds they focus too much on editing and not writing, try writing it out by hand then edit when you transcribe it to your computer.  I know that sounds awful, but it really does help break that habit of editing instead of creating.  The first/rough draft needs to get the story out there, while then next one to several drafts is for fixing and polishing your work.  Trust me, it helps.

When I start a story, I typically know how it will end, and that's the goal I'm working towards.  I'll try to avoid she who must not be named and her boy in the cupboard as examples, though it is a good one, but I learned to do this from playing and running table top roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade.  When running such games, it's your responsibility to come up with a story, plot, characters and as many potential end goals as you can for your players.  They force you into character development, either for your own character (including backstory and personality) or for the characters your players will encounter (non-player characters or NPCs), and the assistance to narration is beyond useful.

For me, such games were beneficial and a curse, as far as being a writer went, since I started focusing more on gaming than writing.  However, before I started gaming, most of my stories were dialogue driven with rather weak narration, or I'd just write scripts.  Once I got back into writing, having ran countless game sessions, I found that my narration improved immensely, but my dialogue suffered.  It took some time, but I think I have finally found a sweet spot with both, still thanks to be roleplay games.

Normally, I don't finish the stories I write.  I typically lose interest before the end or get too distracted.  Since I've started posting a chapter at a time online, I've found the self-imposed deadlines and need to get the content out to be a great, though stressful, motivator.  If I'm writing for myself, I just won't finish it.  I know how the story ends, anyway, so why would I want to bother?  But, when I'm writing for someone else, I feel obligated to finish what I started, so posting my stories online has given me the drive I need to finish that I couldn't do on my own.

My style of writing is pretty basic bitch fair.  As much as I would love to write a fantasy or horror story set in its own world, I'm not skilled enough to do it.  I've tried and it never works outs.  I stick with modern day, general fiction because I can relate to it better.  Normal, average people in every day circumstances is what I know.  Thicker Than Water is one of several stories I've written that are grounded in today's world.  There isn't anything in it that couldn't happen in real life (as some of it is what actually happened to me.) 

I find drama to be the easiest style to write (comedy is notorious for the being the absolute hardest to write, and rightfully so), and the tragedy side of drama what I've defaulted to in the past.  For a long time, there was hardly a story I've written where someone didn't die, and I was never afraid to kill the main character after establishing an emotional connection with the audience.  I once wrote a screen play about a gay man who admits to being in love with his straight friend only to be killed sudden right after.  Apparently, it was good enough that a homophobic coworker who read it offered to play the lead if I ever produced it, even if it meant a sex scene with another man (and no, he definitely wasn't closeted).

I'm also not afraid to write stories or scenarios that would shock, repulse or anger others.  I think making something taboo deprives humanity the ability to understand why things are they way they are.  That's not to say that I don't have my limits, and I do, but I'm also not squeamish when it comes to horrible events and topics.  After all, in order to run an effective game like Dungeons & Dragons, you have to frequently play the bad guys and make them bad enough to get your players motivated to hunt them down.  In a game like Vampire: the Masquerade where you're playing a vampire, as the person running it, you have to play sociopathic and psychopathic characters that make the deeds of your players look tame by comparison, since everyone is the bad guy.

I, by no means, condone the actions of the antagonists in my stories.  I wouldn't call Stephen King a Nazi because of his story Apt Pupil, which is about a kid who discovers his neighbor was a Nazi and then blackmails the man into teaching him how to be evil.  If such things were the case, every fiction author would be just as vile as Hitler, Dhamer and Gacy.  Sometimes, protagonists can be just as bad as the antagonists "for the greater good."  Everything comes down to context, and it's the writer's obligation to make sure the audience understands that, at least in my opinion.

Profanity and bigots words/phrases are also things I don't shy away from unless the character wouldn't say those things.  I've been swearing since the 5th grade, and despite what parents might want to assume, odds are, your kid swear when adults aren't around.  As for the bigotry, if you have a character, especially an antagonist who is a bigot, they're going to use those words and phrases.  You can't realistically expect a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to never drop the N-word because he doesn't want to offend black people. 

You don't need to be gratuitous with anything.  In fact, your story will hold more weight if you use these things sparingly.  The more desensitized your make your audience the less impact the words and your villains will have on them and the story.  If you have a kid that has never said a bad word in the entire story, who has purposeful said things like "heck" and "darn" suddenly cries out, "God fucking damnit!", you've just create a potential compelling (or comical) moment that you would never get from a kid that swore all the time.

And now, we get to voice.  I've ranted on already about 1st verses 3rd person narration, so I won't do that to you again.  With that said, the narrative choice for me is really spontaneous.  While I'm molding the story, I decide which point of view works best for the story.  Generally, if the story has central character and only their perspective, I'll choose 1st person narration; otherwise, it's always 3rd person, which I find to be the most flexible.  What I recommend you never do is have multiple narrators telling the story, unless you're writing a script that will be acted out.  Narrative shifts can be very jarring for the reader and creates a lot of confusion.

Verb tense is also very important, and can be very hard for people, especially those who didn't get a good education.  I had very shitty grammar until I went to college and specifically took a grammar and basic writing class.  In fact, I was forced to, because my placement tests were very bad for English.  We never really learned parts of speech in school to the point where it stuck.  There's a reason why the average American sucks when it comes to higher learning.  Our school are historically under funded and teachers are barely able to keep up with what little they have.  There's political stuff to that, as well, but this isn't the blog for that (yet.)

When writing, I always narrate in past tense (as if everything has already happened), while my dialogue is in present tense (currently happening.)  This is how most stories are written.  I find narration in present or future tense (things that will happen) to be annoying, and I won't read it.  Present tense narration is great for games like Dungeons & Dragons, where you're telling your players what is currently going on, so they can make active choices.  Future tense is just needless for fiction writing, and should be limited even in dialogue (a psychic telling someone's future should use future tense and that's really about it.)  Switching between tense is incredibly difficult, especially for people who didn't or couldn't really grasp it in school.  I still have issues with it at times.

There's also choosing active verbs (regular verbs) or passive verbs (irregular verbs), which can create issues when it comes to the tense of the story, but that's a whole grammar lesson, that this blog is not set up for, especially since I've rambled on a lot already.  To move on from this point, if you're not sure if you're using the correct verb tense, read it out loud, even to yourself.  If it sound correct to your ear, then go with it.  If it doesn't, change it.  Google (or Bing if you're nasty) the word you're stuck on.  For example:  "What's past tense of run?"  Google will tell you.  Don't like the word you got and want to see if you can find a better match?  Google it.  "What's another word for run?"  Not sure if you're using a word correctly?  "What does run mean?"  It's your dictionary and thesaurus all in one.  I don't recommend ChatGBT yet, since it also makes errors in syntax.  Learning how to use punctuation also helps a lot.

Editing, as whined about before, is my bane.  I hate it a lot.  You can use your word processor's spell and grammar check, which is great.  I don't use mine though.  Since I'm submitting chapter by chapter, I put each chapter into an email and use the grammar and spell checker that way.  Most spell checkers are great, except they don't work with certain types of dialogue, like dialects, slang and foreign languages.  If I type, "'Sup?" It comes up as incorrect, but it is correct because it's a modern slang contraction of "What is up?"  I don't want to keep having to go over that throughout an entire 200+ page document every single time I write a chapter, so I plug it in an email, which also preserves my edits (provided I remember the bloody, fucking password!)  I do an initial edit, then after a day or two, I'll copy and paste it to this site, where I do a second edit, carefully rereading each line to make sure that is what's supposed to be said or if I want to make other changes, which I often do, which I then make on the email copy to maintain the record.

It's rare that I do another edit after that.  I don't have the patience for it, nor do I want to risk over editing something.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And that's my writing process in a large nutshell.  Just to keep this from being a dissertation, I'll go into details on narration, dialogue and character development  in future posts, and next week, I'll review Chapter 5, which this originally going to cover, as well.  I hope this was insightful and hopefully, helpful.  Everyone has their own takes on writing, as it should be, but I think we can better ourselves as writers by seeing the tools and methods others use, borrow and add those tools that work into our own toolboxes to help us be better at our craft.

See you in the next one.

John.