One of the often repeated prescriptive pieces of writing advice is to not think as you write. Simply churn out words and worry about the results later. After all, the first draft is supposed to be messy. The rewrite is for fixing it.

I can’t work that way. It’s too chaotic.

It’s not that I don’t do what the advice is actually promoting: Let your imagination run free without limits placed on it by rational thoughts. (That idea is based on the outdated concept that the right-brain is creative and inventive, which you use to write your draft, and the left-brain is critical and logical, which you use when editing. In reality, a person’s abilities are strongest when both halves of the brain work together.)

In my writing process, I do the creative activities before I begin writing. I brainstorm and from that I create mind maps and outlines that guide me through the story. When I begin writing, I know the story and apply writing craft skills the moment I begin putting the story into words. This greatly reduces rework caused by having to rewrite because the first draft was such a mess.

That’s not to say I don’t apply creativity as I use craft skills to write. Knowing the overall story does not mean knowing the details. Discovering the details as I write is one of the addictive aspects of writing — every new discovery causes a rush — but I always know where I’m going with the story.

An example is my current project. When I began, all I knew was that at the midpoint, the human paladin and dragon paladin have a great battle, a battle that leads to the Paladins’ Peace at the end of the story. Beyond that, I had no story ideas. With the don’t think approach, I would simply have started writing and hoped that something would materialize, something probably incoherent that would have require a lot of rework to fix. Instead, I invested time in brainstorming, mind mapping, and outlining based on sound story structure principles. Once I had the story designed, I began writing.

Marvelous things have materialized as I’ve created the details, but the story’s structure has not changed. I’m pleased with the orderly progress I’m making. I would not have been pleased if what I created was a mess.

We each must find our own method that creates the results we seek. It works for some people to write as if they had just walked out the front door and will discover what the day brings. For me, forethought works best. I make plans before I walk out the front door.

In the process of writing the current story, the part of the story that overlaps a previous story has arrived. I’m having fun with it as I learn many things.

One lesson I learned is that approaching a scene from a different character’s point-of-view often reveals potentials for improvements in the original version of the scene. I’m using these revelations to improve the original version.

A second lesson is that sometimes information has already been presented in the current story and then the same information is presented in the original story in the overlapping portion. When that happens, repeating the information is unnecessary and undesirable. Finding a way to skip repeating the information without breaking the flow of the overlapping scene can be a challenge.

The third lesson is that dialogue needs to continue to match between the two stories or the feeling of the scenes being the same scenes from different points-of-view is lost. I find such differences to be irritating. I expect many of my readers would too.

Much work remains to finish the story. I’m sure I’ll learn more lessons along the way.

I finished Dragonslayer by Tui T. Sutherland. I enjoyed the book. The story has three human point-of-view (POV) characters and a few scenes that are the human POV of scenes that were from various dragons’ POVs in the first five books of the Wings of Fire series. That overlapping of events was fun.

The first time I remember encountering overlapping events in books was reading The Masterharper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. That book had Masterharper Robinton’s POV of scenes that in Dragonflight were from Lessa’s POV. I enjoyed seeing those scenes from different perspectives as well as seeing events in those scenes that were off screen in the other book.

I wanted to experiment with doing overlapping events between stories. At about the two-thirds point in my current project, the story overlaps a story I previously wrote. I’m not to that point in writing the story yet, but I look forward to delving into those scenes from a different perspective and providing details that were off screen in the first story.

I have a little more to say about Dragonslayer. A few spoilers follow.

I fell in love with the dragon Sky. He’s the human Wren’s friend and one of the main non-POV characters in the story. He loved watching snails and when he met his first baby turtle, he nearly fainted with joy.

“SO CUTE,” Sky warbled, near tears. He lay down beside the turtle and rested his head on his front claws. “I looooooooooooooooooooooooove it. Wren! Look at its little head. Look at its little feet! It is the sweetest, best little animal in the whole history of the universe.”

I also liked the dragon called Sweetface. Her actual name turned out to be Cereus (which is a type of cactus).

When Sky’s friend Wren spoke to Cereus in the dragon language, Cereus, believing humans can’t actually speak, said to Sky, “She makes dragon noises! You’ve trained her so well! That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”

When Wren told Cereus that she wasn’t making dragon noises, she was speaking Dragon and to stop being a dimwit, Cereus said to Sky, “Awwwwwwwmygoodness, I love her! I want to snuggle her and put little hats on her!”

Later, Sky told Wren, “You’re extremely lovable. Of course, you would be more lovable in a little hat…”

I enjoyed the interaction between Wren and Sky. That is the kind of connections I love exploring in my stories.

I recommend the entire Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland.

While exploring the details of a scene where the protagonist is confronted by an antagonist and his posse, after the confrontation, as the defeated antagonist limps away, magic happened: a new character appeared. Her name is Nyxie.

The protagonist says to her, “Nyxie, why do you hangout with those people? You’re not like them.”

When the antagonist calls for Nyxie to come along, she hesitates before going. Later, in the kidnapping scene, when the antagonist kidnaps the protagonist and his family, Nyxie is with the antagonist. She finally has had enough of the antagonist’s antics and runs for help. She brings back help, but it’s too late, the kidnappers and victims are gone. However, Nyxie leads the rescuers to where the kidnappers took their captives. Then, she disappears from the story with an explanation that no one knows what happened to her.

Not revealed in the story is that Nyxie ran away. She thinks the villagers will be angry about her involvement with the antagonist and the kidnapping, and the antagonist will be angry that she had betrayed him. She decides the best thing to do is to go into hiding.

She travels into the Western Mountains, but is unprepared and inexperienced. She is soon ill, malnourished, and in general not doing well.

Nyxie has only seen two dragons, but she thinks those two are representative of dragons. The dragon helping her is not like them. Nyxie thinks all dragons have a bronzy base color with red, green, and blue highlights distinctive to each individual with additional yellow highlights on females. This dragon has the red, green, blue, and yellow highlights, but the base color is a blue lighter than the highlights’ blue. Nyxie can’t say the dragon’s unpronounceable name, so she calls the dragon Sky.

Also, the dragon is small, like an adolescent dragon — about six meters long from tip of nose to tip of tail where as an adult dragon is about ten meters long. When Nyxie mentions this, the dragon insists she is an adult, she’s just small. Nyxie realizes the dragon is a dwarf dragon.

Nyxie suffers from self-esteem issues. She has a low opinion of herself, sees herself as flawed and inferior, believes herself to be unworthy of love, relies on others to guide her, and is drawn to people who mistreat her because it reinforces her negative self-image. She exists in a constant emotionally impoverished state.

Sky also has issues. While the dragons have never mistreated her — they accept her as she is — she knows she’s different and simply can’t accept herself. She too has run away to live alone; although, she’s an adult dragon and is perfectly capable of caring for herself.

When Nyxie and Sky meet and become partners, their love for each other helps each accept them self.

“We are worthy of love and we are loved.”

All of this magic happened in a brief moment as I explored the details of the protagonist/antagonist confrontation scene. The exhilaration was intense and is what makes writing addictive. Writing the notes about the ideas took a lot longer than the flash of insight that brought them. Now, if only I can find time to write the story. I have so many others queued up.

Glory is compelling. I ponder why.

Glory is a RainWing dragon in the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland and the point-of-view character in The Hidden Kingdom (Wings of Fire Book 3).

Spoiler Alert.

The following contains spoilers for the Wings of Fire series.

Glory’s egg was a substitute for the SkyWing egg that was destroyed when the eggs to fulfill the Dragonet Prophecy were collected. Because of that, the adult caregivers didn’t consider her to be a true part of the Prophecy. And being a RainWing, they considered her to be a lazy, weak, fruit eater, which was the stereotype for RainWings.

The caregivers treated her as inferior, which caused her to grow up bitter and with a bad attitude that hid her sadness. She almost always expressed herself with biting sarcasm. However, she was smart, remembered what she read, and even though she wasn’t as good at fighting as some of the others, she learned to fight and was willing and able to fight when needed.

Even though the caregivers treated her badly, her fellow Dragonets of Prophecy always treated her as one of them. She might have been in a constant state of irritation and annoyance, but she was loyal and true to the other dragonets because they were her family and despite her cynical opinion of her place among the Dragonets of Prophecy, she protected them at any cost.

When she finally meets other RainWings, she learns they act like the stereotype she had been accused of being. The RainWings were not what she had hoped for. She began to despise her people. But she learned the truth about what it meant to be a RainWing and eventually becomes proud of them and of herself for being one of them.

But she has a character change arc journey first.

She tended to be a loner and always wanted to do things for herself with no help because she had to prove she was more than what the stereotype said she was. This caused her many problems. But when she learned her people were threatened, she was willing to do anything to protect them. Initially she tried to do it alone. Her upbringing had made her different from other RainWings. When the NightWings captured her and considered her not to be a threat because she was a RainWing, she thinks, “They’ve never met a RainWing like me.” Sure enough, they end up regretting underestimating her. Still, her attempts to do it all alone did not go well. Ultimately she learned the lesson that she needed others and she embraced the help given to her by others.

Across the first four books of the Wings of Fire series — The Dragonet Prophecy (Wings of Fire Book 1), The Lost Heir (Wings of Fire Book 2), The Hidden Kingdom (Wings of Fire Book 3), and The Dark Secret (Wings of Fire Book 4) — she goes from a despised and neglected replacement dragonet who everyone thinks will amount to nothing to being the respected and feared Queen Glory of the RainWings and NightWings.

And that is the reason Glory is compelling. She was broken, damaged, and downtrodden, yet her experiences, determination, and personality, with the help of her friends and her people, enable her to overcome her personal problems and to ultimately prove she had been great all along.

Glory is a lesson in how to write a compelling character.

As I work through this story of two co-protagonists learning about each other, my challenge has become weaving the emotions of the characters. They each have moments of fear and moments of cheer. Each meeting brings one emotion or the other. Highs and lows intertwine until a moment of crisis when their relationship almost fails. From this near failure comes new understanding, and a new way of see each other. I’m feeling my way to that critical moment. It’s hard work that requires many experiments to find the right words.

My current story project is a challenge. With two point-of-view characters of equal importance, the story passes back and forth between them, scene by scene, as it progresses. I put a lot of effort into designing the story, but ultimately, the finished outline was little more than a list of plot point events that guide me through the story’s structure. I know less about the details that lead from plot point to plot point than I typically do when I write a story. The story is still on track, but there are times I must pause to think about what happens next. It’s challenging, but fun. And, I’m learning a lot.

Some people doodle while they think. Some people twirl a pencil. Some people bend paperclips. I like to make charts, graphs, and maps while I think. These charts, graphs, and maps are useful. They always support what I’m thinking about, which is usually the story I’m writing.

My current story makes occasional references to the backstory. I realized I did not know the timeline of that backstory. The timeline is important because some of the characters are children whose ages would dictate how they responded to or participated in past events, and even to what events they might remember. To help ensure what I described about the children made sense, I made a timeline and age chart. Now I know, for example, that Naia was two years old when the Dragon War ended. She could not have done some of the things I had imagined her doing. I’m glad I checked her age before I wrote those scenes.

My stories are always better when I make charts, graphs, and maps while I think.

This novella has been a challenge, but it has been a good challenge. I like the story. Only the last few paragraphs of the resolution remain. Then, the editing begins. Getting the original words down can be a painful struggle, but editing is pleasant. I enjoy refining the story, improving word selection, and honing to make the story precise with no unnecessary fluff. This will be a fine story, a story to be proud of.

Deus ex machina is a plot device where a person or thing is introduced unexpectedly and which provides a contrived solution to an apparently unsolvable difficulty.  I fear accidentally creating these.

In my current project, I have several situations that require setup ahead of time so that when the story arrives at one of those situations, the solution does not come across as contrived.  However, sometimes I haven’t fleshed out the events that would feel contrived if not properly setup ahead of time.

Tonight, I revisited earlier parts of the story to sow more seeds to cover the situations that are now beginning to take on their full form.  This weaving of story elements into a complex pattern is fun, but I will need beta readers to tell me if the setups work to prevent deus ex machina.