How do you write?

As a writer, I find I am always curious about how other people write their fiction. Do you write it section by section or write the entire story and then revise? Do you have a series of revision steps or do you just edit it over and over until you feel it’s right? It’s a curious thing for me because I’m not sure I’ve ever approached stories from the same writing format until recently, and even my current writing format is really only useful for the short stories I write.

I’ve written novel content where I planned it all out before hand, knowing at point where they next big plot event was going. I’ve written one project completely as I went. I made it up along the way and never knew what the next chunk was going to be until about a day before I actually wrote it. One of my projects is formulating by creating the background lore of that universe along with something akin to a historical overview or book of legends as the initial work.

Then I’ve got my short stories that I’m doing now. Those actually have a pretty well refined formula that fits my tastes. I write the rough draft and then I begin my revision process. Each revision consists of two stages: notation and changes. In the notation stage, I simply read what I wrote and add comments on areas that need attention. I make the actual changes when I do the changes stage. I have personally found this beneficial because I used to start changing things and then about three pages later I realized that I had forgotten I already wrote my changes as part of the rough draft, just in a different point in the story.

These two stages aren’t the only structure to my revisions. I do a total of four revisions myself before I send it to my editor. My first two revisions are focused predominantly on content. I look for plot holes, inconsistencies, areas that need more elaboration, and so on. I look for ways to improve and complete the entire story. My third revision is what I would call the visual revision. During this stage I focus on areas of missing visual details. I have a tendency in my early drafts to focus on one writing aspect. If there’s a large chunk of dialogue, I often forget about physical actions or body language that should be happening during the exchange of words. When I’m writing action sequences, I have a tendency to forget the visual descriptors. If I’m being honest, I’m always forgetting about visual descriptors. My fourth revision is what I would call the language revision. In this stage I look for things that were said poorly or didn’t make sense. I look for ways to make the word choice improve the story without changing the content or meaning of what I am trying to say. After those four revisions, I do one final read through and then it’s off to my editor to get picked apart.

So, do you have any particular writing styles or structures that you follow? If so, feel free to share them. Thanks!