ARTICLE

Freewriting

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Freewriting is also sometimes referred to as “pantsing”, as in “writing by the seat of your pants” rather than first creating a plan or an outline to work from. It begins with an idea for a story that the writer feels is strong enough to follow. The writer may write a few brief notes about the story, characters, or outline, but often the seed of the idea is so young that there’s not much to get down at this early stage.

For freewriters, the development of this idea, and all the plotting and characterisation, occurs “on the page” while they are writing the first draft. If you are this type of writer, you probably feel confident you can write quickly enough to capture the story as it unfolds to you. The pressure to get the story down before you forget elements of it also helps to keep you motivated. Writers who deliberately choose to work in this manner consider that the magic of the story occurs because they don’t attempt to control every detail.

The first draft produced by freewriting is usually, and purposefully, extremely rough. Some writers don’t stop to correct typos or spelling, while others keep their copy fairly clean. Others might finish or start the day with a quick edit to tidy up some of the worst errors and add in the required punctuation.

If you hit a block where the upcoming scenes seem blank, a common trick amongst freewriters is to write anything at all, and keep writing until the story restarts itself. Some writers say they have written page after page of “I don’t know what to write”.

Once the first draft is down and the story is in place, the next stage is the heavy editing and rewriting of the story. Much will be unusable, but there are often some gems worth keeping and other parts that can be polished and improved.

Freewriting may be the technique for you if you do your best work on the fly, under pressure of last minute deadlines, or are able to produce convincing work out of thin air. It’s also useful if you’re able to self-edit strictly, but you need to be able to turn your inner editor off and on as you need her. A first draft written in this way is not meant to be perfect, its purpose is to capture the story, but do try to ensure that you can at least make out what you’ve written when you read it back later on.

This article also features on BellaOnline.

If you want to learn to use freewriting techniques to your advantage, try these books for more information:

No Plot? No Problem! : A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo founder

First Draft In 30 Days : A Novel Writer's System for Building a Complete and Cohesive Manuscript by Karen Wiesner