Due to a bizarre complex, I usually think I’m very unique in a lot of things I do. I was amazed to find another person who had the same thing I did, an inner sanctuary. We had great fun detailing our individual worlds to each other. Of course, we used pre-existing ones then (so, fanfiction), but now I’m getting back to where I was as a child, in worlds I made up. Once things settle down in my life, I will actually buckle down and write them out.

The only thing for me is that I usually have a hard time visualizing faces. If a director were to ask me if they could make my story into a movie, I would have no idea who to pick for the actors. Everything else usually is pretty detailed. I unfortunately don’t have the discipline to have it super detailed in my mind, but I manage to write it out anyway. The thing that’s usually most strong is the emotions in my inner movie theater. I will play scenes over and over again, focusing on the reactions, thoughts and feelings of the characters. I also focus on the exact intonation of the voices, even though I know I’ll never convey it exactly.

Thanks for writing this; it certainly is food for thought.

By the way, I just want to say that I love your blog. Before I started reading it, writing was a sporadic hobby. But you’ve inspired me to want to do it for a living, not to mention you’ve been a role model in other ways. I know that’s kind of off-topic, but I just wanted to say thanks!

I assumed everybody experienced story that way, just as I assumed that everybody saw mini-movies in their head when they listened to music (which is why I never got the point of music videos – the movies in my head were so much better). In fact, I was quite stunned when I found out that most people do not experience story or music that way.

I might have 150 alien characters sitting around in a spaceport bar while 5 more carry on a conversation, but I can look inside all their heads to read their thoughts and backstories if the tale needs that sort of detail.

But the real reason I looked for one of your posts today is the blasted screaming uncertainty I went through after finishing a completed rough first draft of one part of a two part story last night. You were absolutely right about the bam, bam, bam of beating one’s head against a brick wall thinking that the story isn’t going to fit neatly into the concept of same that was its starting point. What I finished last night is good. What I outlined when I came up with the idea for the two parter is far less so. In short, there’s no way I’m going to be able to make what I wrote fit into the framework of what I *planned* to have written. I don’t want to throw the original idea away, but what I ended up with is far better than what I outlined. And no publisher in their right mind is going to read through my original concept of what I wanted for part one to get to the really excellent part two that I finished last night. Why did I write pt 2 before pt 1? I thought I might come up with stuff to forshadow and extra character backstory that would make pt 1 better.

This is a very frightening feeling: realizing that the finished 1st draft is nothing like the original idea, better than the original idea, and isn’t going to fit with the original outline of the *rest* of the story that I still need to write. I’m not asking you what I should do. I know what I need to do is to scrap the outline and let the story evolve on its own terms.

What I’m doing, in my long-winded way, is trying to thank you for warning me that this sort of emotional upset is normal for a writer to go through when they reach certain points in a manuscript. Without the advice to writers that you’ve offered in your blog over the last couple of years, I’d probably think I was nuts and just scrap the whole story as a failed attempt. Instead, I know that these doubts and second-guessing thoughts are normal, and will pass in a short while.

Thanks for having broken a trail for others to find. Remembering what you’ve written in your blog posts has helped me stay sane today.

Dan

Writing for me has always been a 3D, technicolor, surround sound experience, and I remember being shocked when I learned it isn’t that way for everyone. I know the way the air smells in a particular scene; I feel the texture of the clothing the character is wearing; I hear that little catch in their voice as they tell a not-quite-truth to the one the they love.

The process you describe reminds me of that, and of John and Caitlin Matthews’ writings on shamanism.