This article on my writing process was posted as part of a blog tour for What Grows From the Dead. It was originally posted here.

Writing past your headlights

It’s late, and your trip’s been long and difficult. You’re off the main road, trying to follow directions, but they aren’t detailed enough. You’ve never been here, you’re not familiar with the territory, and nothing looks familiar in the dark – just shadows, hints, only coming into focus for an instant as your lights cross them. There’s paint on the road to show the lanes, but some of it is worn away, and the intersections and turns aren’t marked.You’re going too fast for your lights, and if something’s in the road, you’re in for a few moments of either terror or panic as you try not to run headlong into it. 

That’s my writing process. I’m what writers call a “pantser,” somebody who writes by the seat of their pants. That’s in contrast to a “plotter,” somebody who has reams of backstory, character profiles, recipes, history, and a massive, detailed plot outline, somebody who knows what’s happening in each chapter, what beats they need to hit, as they progress towards the plot’s conclusion, along the route they’ve already worked out and carefully crafted step by step.

Those two styles are wonderful in that they both can lead to terrific work. J.R.R. Tolkien was clearly a plotter, almost more excited about creating the details his world’s history and language and legend than he was in the story on which the book rests. Donald Westlake, author of countless mysteries, legendarily hated outlines and just wanted as he wrote to find “what’s next?”

How it works for me is I just start writing, page one, and usually I just write until the first draft of book is finished. I usually have no more than a couple sentences of concept, not a plot, just a setup. I often don’t know who my characters are, or even how many they will be, until I begin to discover them on the page. A pattern I often follow is to write for a bit and then throw myself a curve at the end of a chapter – a twist in the plot, an unexpected appearance, a secret revealed. I certainly don’t try to make every chapter end on a cliffhanger, but those seem to me to be natural moments of heightened interest, nice punctuation marks in the narrative. Often I don’t know what they are or even when they’re coming until I write them. If I’m doing my job right, they also serve as little nudges to keep reading – the reader saying “what’s next?” right along with me.

In What Grows from the Dead, one of those moments that turned out to be central to the story was a “what’s in the box?” moment, one that readers of the book will surely remember. I had no idea starting the chapter what was in the box. I hadn’t even known there was going to be a box until I threw it in as another twist a couple chapters earlier. I certainly didn’t know that the contents of the box would be critical to how the story played out. I did know it had to be something important and maybe a little unexpected given that I’d kind of hyped it up some, but beyond that, I didn’t know until I wrote the last sentences of the chapter what was in there.

I’m sure that sounds chaotic, and it is, but I have a good bit of background in thinking this way. I’ve been doing improv comedy for the past 18 years with a group at a local comedy club, and my love for that feeds perfectly into my writing style. With improv, you start a scene without knowing what it’s about, without knowing where you are, who you’re with, or even who you are. All of that gets solidified as you go, ideally early on in the scene so you can build the relationships and the drama that make the scene get moving and have a more appealing (and if you do it well, amazing and funny) plotline. You’re doing all the elements of storytelling there in the moment, while people are watching you, without a chance to edit or go back or rethink, and it’s just magical when it works. The basic tenet of improv is “yes, and” – meaning I accept what you’ve just added to our world, and here is something else I’m giving back, something that hopefully expands and defines the world, our characters, our relationships, our desires. 

When improv succeeds, it’s absolutely enchanting. In part, that’s because the expectations the audience has are so low – they know you’re making up a scene and a story and a world on the spot, and if you pull it off, even halfway, they’re with you, impressed or even amazed. If you fail, you can just go on to the next scene, and you’ve only wasted a few minutes of people’s time. With books, however, it’s totally different. You’re asking people to spend hours in your world, and there’s a strong expectation going in that the book will be good, that it will be polished, tight, meaningful, lyrical. You don’t get the grace that an improv audience will give you, and you shouldn’t get it. Even if you write a book using the principles from improv, the book still needs to be just as good as what you’d get from somebody with fifteen notebooks full of outlines, backstory, and character sketches.

That’s where editing and rewriting come in for me. I can improv a first draft, see what happens, get to know my characters, come up with a plot and world, emotional beats and a satisfying ending. Once I’ve done that, I get right back in my car and drive that route again, this time in daylight, where I can see appreciate the colors and the leaves and see everything coming. That’s when the world truly takes full shape.