07 April

Scene Segment Your Writing Time...

 

How should you segment your writing session time? 
 
This is a well debated topic. But with all the varied advice out there, some "experts" force a rational process over a creative one, and that can often hamper the story quality.
 
If you segment by word count or chapter, you are thinking rationally. You will produce prose forced under a numerical quantity and not creative quality.
 
Although you may not be conscious of it, if you say to yourself, I have to write X number of words or X number of chapters, you will draft those segments with glue words - fillers, adjective, adverbs, info dumps, meaningless dialogue, and the like - that will only have to be altered or outright removed in the edit phase. You will literally be wasting your time.
 
Consider writing by scene, in line with the scene cards I mentioned in an earlier post. Apply one scene's details/factoids to one card, and in each writing session, work on the completion of that scene, completely disregarding its length or shape or word count.
If one scene is very small, write out two scenes per session. 
If one scene is huge, segment it into its parts. 
 
As an artist, never lose sight of the visuals/story essence in your tale, and be devoted to their quality presentation, and not some arbitrary numerical delineation.
You do that, and what you produce will be a quality draft that will hold less gaffes to be dealt with in the edit. And your writing session efforts will be satisfying, for you will know you remained devoted to the story's world instead of some meaningless marker.
 
In your next session, follow me, and give this a try. You'll be glad you did!

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