I'm working out a kind of assembly-line process for my stories. In case anyone is interested-- and for my own documentary purposes-- the current process is as follows:
1) Start with a twenty-minute free-write of whatever's next in the outline, dictating the story to myself as I type it.
2) (This is a new step.) Add in significant sensory details, from the least to the most obvious: taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight.
3) Read through the new material once, cutting excess as I see it.
4) Go back to the beginning again and read the whole thing aloud. This brings a lot of needed adjustments to mind.
5) Read through the whole thing one more time, then save it for later revisions and move on.
I tend, however, to do most of the editing in between looking at interesting links from Facebook, Twitter and Blogger-- look at a page, fix a paragraph, etc. This makes the process much slower, of course, but I've tried just not surfing until I finished my page count and it failed dramatically. Anyway, everything is research. *shifty eyes*
So that's what I'm doing. I'm at 7500 words on Dwellers now, and I expect the word-count will go up a lot more now that I've added descriptions to this draft. I know this all probably sounds weird and backwards to a seasoned writer, but I'm in an experimental stage right now. When I finally reach the end, I'll put the draft aside for later revision-- may or may not try to get through a first draft of the next (unrelated) project before revising this one.
Still trucking through Middlesex. I'm past the halfway mark now. Woot!
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