There is, of course, the rule soon to come: A good writer can ignore all rules.

I agree with much of what you say. And the bit about “lunatic dedication” absolutely.

Ant: It’s a literary fiction thing, I think. While you fall in love with the characters in Twilight, you don’t fall in love with them for their progression, you fall in love with what they do. Or maybe you just lust after them.

Clowncar: Not so useful a comment when I’ll be teaching this sort of thing next fall.

It’s a journey. It’s different for everyone.

We started out with a framework, to be sure, but the nature of our arrangement – passing things back and forth – has meant that we often write in sections or clips, and they aren’t always in chronological order. To be sure that’ll mean an extra layer of editing in there, one to check for constancy and timeliness. But it’s what works for us now.

Still, it’s interesting to see how the overall plot has changed. Our initial framework has been through several iterations, and although the end result is the same, our characters have done differently in some situations than we expected at first. The backstory has come gradually; we have learned our characters over the years, and the ones I am closest to I can slip on like a second skin. If I am handed any situation, however, strange, I could tell you how my girl would react. Because I know her.

I agree with you that a lot of readers today are more interested in the human element. Most of my favorite books are driven more by character than plot. Take TGoST, for instance. Arundhati Roy has great prose, but her method in this book is disjointed, and the story is… well, it’s largely already happened. We see the world through the eyes of characters living with the aftermath. The reader largely seeks to discover what has happened. It’s not the type of book I would write, but her characters and writing are so engaging that I’m always driven to finish.

One series that I read (fantasy by Terry Goodkind, not really your thing… though there is some epic warmaking going on) uses several different characters per book to convey the story. It works out perfectly well, largely since all of the main characters are folks I find interesting or likeable or both. But the only book of his that completely falls flat for me is one that where he tries to tell the story almost completely through new characters. We don’t even see the protagonists from the other books until the very end. This is a difficult shift for such an established audience, but what makes it even worse is that the replacements aren’t likeable. One is barely even human, and the other is sort of a one-dimensional wuss. It’s hard to see how he managed to go from some of the other books to this. My guess is that he lost track of the human question.

I also loved that you said this: ‘This may not work for all of you. And it doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes I get stymied.”

Because the thing is, I think every writer is different, and to a degree, every project (even for the same writer) may be different too. I keep thinking, Oh, I’ve found what works for me! Only to find that what once worked, only worked once.

That’s not to say that *nothing* is held constant. But unfortunately there are no “3 easy steps” to my writing process, and I would hazard a guess to say that I’m not the only one who feels that way.