How long is this story going to be?
I really don’t know yet, I have some deadlines built into the story. Europe, A Wedding, I really want to bring Lisel back to Penny’s house to see her room and meet Einstein and Leaky. And of course the stupid cat.
Pacing of the chapters?
Each chapter is a day or part of a day depends on what the characters are doing. They really write themselves I just start writing and they show up.
What’s the process?
I have a moleskin notebook that has drawings, doodles, plots ideas, character details, a calendar, timelines for the characters . All the logical stuff to tie together the past and the present. I can answer really odd questions about when someone was born, died, how old were they when something happened.
A new chapter usually starts out as me looking through the notebook, either having a new idea or one I didn’t get to from a prior chapter. I’ll also just read the character snippets and something comes to me.
Generally I write the disclaimer first, it’s more of a warm up than anything, it gets several iterations until I’m comfortable that is humorous and usually sarcastic in some general way. It can also be narrative of what I’m doing or thinking at that point in my day. I then usually write the first scene. Sometimes if I already have a really fleshed out scene I’ll write that first then the disclaimer. Many times I write it on my iPad if it pops in my head because it needs to be written, NOW. Sometimes the scene is written long hand in the notebook.
I take a break between the first and second scene. Once I have the story straight in my head I just start writing usually until the entire chapter is done. I edit and change it at least once, most of the time two or three times then post it late in the evening.
The next morning I print last night’s chapter and read while I run on the treadmill in the morning. Thne make final edits, usually typos, missing words etc. that morning.
Every 3 or 4 chapters I read the last 5 chapters and make any other edits.
The Threads Fiction Project 