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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ธ.ค. 2017
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I admire your follow through. You say you are going to do something and then put serious effort into making it happen. 👍🏼
I remember a time when I was the opposite. I'd set myself a goal, and if I missed it I'd quit and then move into something completely unrelated. Which I'd then quit. The big shift came when I realized I didn't have to nail every goal. It was more about the daily progress and the journey than whatever arbitrary finish line I'd come up with =D
That's the world I'm fighting against right now. I hope I can reach the level of discipline you got.
The logo is boss. I found your writing process interesting... back when I had the Day Job I was doing 1500/day but with loose outlining because I had the time between sprints (24 hours!) to work the details through in my head. Now I'm doing 5-7k/day (depending) but it needs more outlining up front (and as you point out, you need to have slices where you can replot). Fascinating you do per-arc, I do a time-based stream, I love the differences :) A friend of mine writes 3 books at the same time in different universes, which would do my head in.
Thanks for giving us an honest glimpse into your writing process and some of the things you contend with in order to get the words out. Keep it up.
Great logo! Thanks for making these videos, Chris. So useful and they've really helped me keep the motivation up. Finished a 10K-word outline yesterday... in large part thanks to you. Just taking a mental breather (while I await some feedback from a couple friends) before one final outline pass and getting into my own sprints, chapter by chapter.
I love your attitude on the days when you need to plot. Thanks for sharing your amazing progress.
As always, very useful and inspirational. Love the logo!
As ever, thank you for your wise words. It’s such a support for one such as I.
I love the Chris Fox logo.
Great video, Chris. I love your work ethics and your logo is simply awesome - very classy and ties into your name perfectly.
I love seeing your creative method! Your nonfiction books have really helped me to change my perspective in terms of planning to make a living as an author, but the stuff I just straight up enjoy to learn about for fun is.... This. Seeing how you outline character arcs, how you construct a story, how you organize some of the creative chaos. Thanks, as always, for your resources!
Soooo useful. Love your videos. You always inspire me. The bumper is awesome.
Great video. Thank you yet again for giving us a peek into your daily life. I’m still working on getting into the flow state every time I write and hitting my word goals, but it is a marathon (made up of little sprints). Videos like this help. Also, like the logo at the end.
Thank you so much. Your practical tips and work ethic have been an inspiration that accompanied my writing of my first novel. I really really appreciate your generosity :)
Just stumbled upon your channel, really help in getting me to start my writing journey
Awesome video - very inspiring and the logo ROCKS!!!!
Hey Chris, thanks for another great video! I love the logo!
Thanks, Chris. Finding your video's has been a game changer.
Happy to help! What genre do you write? =)
Your work ethic's extremely inspiring!
You are doing a great job for writers worldwide! Thank you 💥
I love that you lay it all out there. I'm still working on getting to 5000 words an hour. Not quite there yet. I'll get there though. Great animated logo at the end!
Super helpful, as always! Love your logo:)
Teacher: this isn't a paper you can write the night before
Anakin: *you underestimate my power*
Hold my beer and watch this.
@Chris Fox thanks for sharing everything that you do. I haven't been able to afford any of your books yet; I'm a married college student and my wife is our only source of income a the moment. You are constantly an encouragement for me to face my dreams of being an independent fantasy and lit fic author. I'm hoping to get a few of your books for Christmas/hoping I'll have time to read them before school starts back up. Thank you so much for everything that you do!
5,000 Words Per Hour is free at chrisfoxwrites.com if money is an issue. That's by far my most popular book, and the one people most often write in to say helped them. I know what it's like to struggle financially to the point where every purchase matters. If you finish that one and can't afford the others shoot me an email and I'll be happy to share them with you.
Very nice logo, was going to comment on it last week. Love the animation.
Thank you for another awesome video, Chris! And the new logo rocks! Now I'm jealous of your word count AND your logo. ;-)
Your numbers sheet is helpful. It's hard to improve a craft if you don't measure it.
I like the logo! Thanks for sharing your process, your videos are helping me a lot.
So glad you can take weekends off now. Fantastic
Good stuff Chris. I like the new logo too.
Thanks Chris, I learn so much from you. I've tried to increase my word count before and was never successful. From watching your video, I feel I can do it.
I gave myself the goal of finishing my book last week and to do that I had to write over 26,000 words. I hit high 6000 at least three days which I've never done before. I also found I had to stop and adjust the plot a bit and that day I only had around 2500. While I found most days weren't super draining, by Friday, I admit I kind of felt like my brain was leaking out of my ears. In the past, it's taken me about 6 weeks to finish my books, but I was also teaching during those time and I think that just takes more brain space. I did find I didn't get much else done last week, and at least one evening my family had to scrounge up their own dinners. :) I don't know that I could keep up that kind of pace all the time just because I have other people/commitments that need my time during the day. I'd be curious to know how the other things in your life work when you are writing at this kind of pace on a regular basis. :)
LOVE the new logo, especially the chalk-drawn look.
Ahhh! I see it! I'm so glad you like it!
Plus, I really love this video! I'm aiming to release two fiction novels in 2018, and the bulk of the rest of the writing will be my grad papers. I'm on an accelerated track to get my M.A. in 12 months, so I'm actually going to apply this to my non-fiction and grad writing as well (I've got full research papers due every other month for all of 2018!)
excellent logo design
Love love love the logo!! It looks really neat, almost like the logo of a movie producing studio or something! Could you perhaps do a video (or give advise) on the reading to become a better writer thing? Do you read a lot of books? If yes, what kind?
Thanks for the video. I like the idea of using a spreadsheet to track one’s progress throughout a writing project. I thought of a way to improve upon it, that you and other writers might find useful. I am going to include another column to record the reason a certain word count was reached. Whether it is a low count because of working on the story’s structure, or a high count because of no distractions or being highly motivated that day, being able to track why a certain word count was reached should help raise the word count even higher. 👊🏻
It sounds like we think very similarly. I've pared down my spreadsheet a lot. It used to meticulously track attention level, and time. I used that to figure out when I write my best works (which is unsurprisingly mornings). I'm almost 30% faster before noon than I am afterwards. If you do track it, I'd love to hear how it goes!
Great info. Thanks for sharing. My tendency has been to write each chapter as it arrives, much as the reader encounters it. That's resulted in a lot more pantsing than plotting and, to be honest, has made me come up with some twists that I wouldn't have seen earlier on. But building a story, while it should seem organic, is also like constructing a house: each part needs to help support the whole and needs to be planned out before the nails and hammers start that part.
Thanks for sharing.
I am going to try this method
You mention writing through each arc individually. My question is, how would you re-combine those arcs if/when they flow through the same scene? I'm intrigued by this idea. If you write a scene with Character-A wanting a macguffin, then write the same scene separately, following Character-B - I expect the character interactions may be vastly different. How do you reconcile those together? Thanks! Also, love the logo - very clean.
I upvoted, because this is a great question. I really wrestled with this early in the book, but had a better flow by the end. I'd do say four Aran chapters, and then find that the next chapter in his arc was really from someone else's perspective. At that point, I would switch to that other person and write the chapter sequentially. If possible, I'd stay in that new arc for a few more chapters. This was tricky to arrange some days, and I ended up switching between 3-4 perspectives. It slowed the writing a LOT more than I expected. Being able to focus on a single PoV has proven to be pretty powerful for me.
Hmm...kind of like changing lanes. I really like this, it dovetails with the notion of each character being the main character of their own story. Though it does make my head hurt. haha. thanks for the response. :)
@@ChrisFoxWrites I'd worry about plot changes occurring organically in the chapters I skipped to keep the single POV arc going.
Could you do a time lapse video of your sprints, up to 7000?
learning so i can finishing my dissertation
'Love that logo!
Thumbs up on the logo!!
I think the most important thought here was not to beat yourself up when you can't hit the goal due to having to stop and regroup or plot. My plot changes so much from the time I plan it to the time the book is complete that it is almost a waste of time to do it at all. BTW, I love the logo!
“I can write faster than anyone who can write better, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster.” A. J. Liebling
I don’t agree with this quote at all and it’s opposite of what the best writers I follow say, it’s a fact that the fastest writers write the best quality work as they are in a natural flow state. This has been proven and discussed by many great and fast writers!
Way back in your 5k a day book you say the first step of a sprint is knowing what to write and, as this video demonstrates, you can know something and still need reminders to truly 'get it.'
I'm learning that if I can't play the scene in my head, I don't know it well enough and need to stop and 'get it'. So worth the time IMO.
Something I've been playing around with this year. Helped me get through NaNoWriMo much faster and more comfortably. Thanks for putting this stuff out there. Writing can be such a solitary pursuit, it's good to know the journey is over a well-worn path.
I think the logo is mighty fine.
The logo is rad! You need to turn the gain / input volume down though. You're blowing out that microphone. :)
Writing 7,000 words per day is impressive - super impressive to be sure - but I think what would be truly helpful is teaching how you set yourself up to be able to accomplish that goal. Because anyone can TYPE 7,000 words per day, but it's writing that amount of high quality storytelling that is actually impressive.
And that's where I'm amazed - how do you plot in such a short time to allow you to produce books so quickly? Maybe it's because I like deeper stories, with twists and intrigue, but it boggles my mind that you plot your story in 4 days - it takes me weeks to come up with plots, and sometimes I'm stuck on where to take a scene for days!
Anyways, keep up the good work, but in the future I'd love to see more about your process than your output.
Hey, Matt! My next non-fiction book is about plotting, and I'll be doing a series in January to break down my process. In the meantime you might consider my video on the Story Circle if you haven't seen it. The reason why my plotting process is so much shorter is the volume of practice I've done. Every week for literally decades I had to prepare a game session for 4-6 people in Dungeons & Dragons or similar pen and paper games. This really expanded my knowledge of story structure, and that's the secret to fast plotting. Once you understand the vital moving pieces it becomes very easy to spot the ones that are missing.
I know this video is much older, but I'm just now getting into writing sprints. I did two 5 minute sprints and I write longhand, but it really helped me get back into the story. How long are your sprints these days, Chris?
I do roughly 20 minutes, but I've reached a point where I no longer time them, and just write until I finish a chapter. However, if it's been a while sometimes I need to add the timer back in to jumpstart my writing =)
Oh man, following character arcs instead of going in sequential order just tripled my output. I feel rather stupid for not doing that earlier. Seems so obvious but I guess I needed to hear someone say it.
Nice logo! Def found this vid useful. ;) Quick question: How long are/were each of your sprints? I haven't tried sprints...yet.
My sprints can vary in length, but average 20-25 minutes. I started with much shorter ones, and have experimented with longer. People seem to find that differing lengths work. One author I know does four hour sprints =O.
4 hours? Oye! I'll start with 20-25 and see how that goes, lol! Thanks!
wait what!? THEY PLAY CASUAL CHESS!?
joking joking :P nice video Chris. I can see why you have felt the need to change your approach to 7k words a day, but I think you're more than giving enough to make up for those days where you don't get to the 7k mark.
Also, nice logo, but I have to ask you... what is it exactly? :D it gave me an idea but maybe it is a bit vague at least for me to figure it out. Anyway, I think it gives a nice british impression, at least to me :)
Looking forward to the plot gardening videos you have planned. I do have an idea on how you go about it from your other videos where you brought it up, but a video with all the details will be nice to see :)
The placeholder for the Chess like game I created is DRAGON GO. I always say it in a deep announcer's voice in my head. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...DRAGON GO!
Chris I love the logo and appreciate this video. QUESTION: Do you use Dragon for Mac? Thank you.
I do! Most often I'll record on my iPhone and use the transcription to get it into Dragon. I'm not dictating much these days, but do still use it on occasion. It was a lot more useful when I had a day job.
That makes this video even better. I'm trying to up my daily word count. I've been thinking about dictation after listening/reading your book. But being a Mac user I haven't read many good reviews and my brain flows better through my fingertips. :)
Dragon for Mac isn't too bad now. It works great with Scrivener--since the updates it's not up to much with Pages. Dictation is a bear at the start (I have to use it because of a hand disability) but your brain starts to get into the flow, even with voicing the punctuation. It's super handy if you use the transcription like Chris said. I always have a little dictaphone with me for notes etc.
Susan Braithwaite Thank you for adding your comment. I have the latest version of Scrivener. Which version of Dragon do you use?
I'm using Dragon 6.0.8 (the latest update) with the older version of Scrivener. I downloaded the trial version of Scrivener 3 and gave it a quick test with Dragon. In the brief testing I found it to work just as well as it does on my older version. Hope that helps :)
Hi Chris, you've hinted at this before, but how much would you say you've planned out a scene before sitting down to write it? What level of detail?
This varies based on the scene, and the PoV in question. For some characters, especially key points in the book, I write a lot. Many paragraphs describing the turning emotional charge of the scene (from Story), to motivation, to actual events. For others, especially when I'm really in the flow of a character, I might only do a paragraph with a scene goal. In both cases the goal is to play the scene in my head like a movie projector. If I can't do that, I probably need to write a little more about the scene, or to think about it away from the keyboard.
Chris Fox that's very helpful, thank you! I have three of your non fiction books and tech mage, which I am enjoying. Keep up the good work! I look forward to writing at this pace one day!
Do you think outlines are really needed? I'm 7k words into my novel (second day of writing it), and I find it all seems to go pretty well by just switching my critical side off. Somehow, the story appears on paper and as weird as it was during the first 2 chapters, it seems to be coming together on the third chapter.
No you don't need an outline, you'll just have a bit more editing once you're done with the rough draft.
It depends on the story you're writing. For instance, if you need some huge twist at the end, then you need an outline.
This is what I was thinking. You could also loosely plot after the first draft is finished, if you think that's better.
You got the info already so you are able to do so
In essence, yes. I know what I'm going to write ahead of time. Cranking words is still really hard, but I don't hit the same kind of roadblocks if I know what the next few chapters are.
What of short stories, then? Let's say short stories that may not even reach 40 pages, or just short stories in general. I guess it all comes down to the type of writer you are, but I wonder what others think. Plotting scares me as the writing process itself, for me, is exhausting, so I need that energy to write my story. Actually, I feel like I've wasted so much time not writing that I can't sit down and do that.
I mean, it isn't like I'm writing novels right now. I want to start with shorts and move my way up.
So ...you get to write average /not thin book in ...what, 20 days? 10 days for editing and combining and - 1 book per month, few months of vacation and so ...10 books /year? That's borderline insane. I guess your problems then shift from "I'll never finish this book" to "who the hell will read and publish all this shit I churn out" ; )
I've sold almost a quarter of a million books, and my average review score across all titles is 4.5. I'm not having a problem finding people to read the 'shit I churn out' ;)
Oh I was speaking hypothetically and in feeble humorous attempt. I'm sure your method works fine ...for you at least. I don't think I could ever write that much even if English was my main language. Partially because of theme, sources I have to use (dictionaries, wikipedia articles, maps) but also because things I write about have to be "baked" in my head first, then put on paper.
I think you give yourself too little credit, and are making some assumptions about how I can write books so quickly. I spend a long time baking my plots. Those can take weeks or months as I gradually create the outline.
Only the writing goes quickly, and that requires a sufficiently detailed outline. My first book took me four years. My most recent took about three weeks. Practice will dramatically accelerate how quickly you can build a good story =)
Thanks, your example is certainly encouraging one. If I achieve just a 1/3 of your progress ratios I'll be more then happy. That part about "baking" then writing, It took me years to collect all the ideas of stuff I want to put on paper. You see, with those fantastic writing rates you and other authors achieve I just think that I would ran out of ideas very quickly. But maybe my fears are unfounded. Thanks again and I'll try to grab one of your books in near future, theme seems interesting and certainly up my alley.
I'm not familiar with this 5000 words an hour concept... but it seems illogical, considering you'd need to type over 80 words a minute, while average typing speed is around 40. Am I missing something here? That's not even accounting for sometimes having to stop and think, or not having a laser focus for an hour straight.
The goal of the system is to get yourself into flow state by turning off your inner critic. Editing can come later, so the goal is to get words down at speed. My sprints are short, with the longest being 20 minutes these days. Most people are skeptical, of course, but I've got 22 books in print and have only been doing this for a few years. Practice will dramatically increase both the speed and quality of your words.
Wow, thanks for the speedy reply! I watched some of your other videos, and have now subscribed! :D Like I said, the typing speed just seemed baffling to me. I will take your advice to heart though, and work on being less critical as I write. I'm working on my first novel now, so I have a long way to go :)
Dude you are 53??? You don't look that old you look like guy in his early thirties
I'm 42 =)
I love your writing advise but I think Virgil wrote,on average, 1 or 2 lines a day so... quantity vs quality?
'Tis a false dichotomy for writers.
If one writes fast, it doesn't necessarily mean writing less skillfully. The more practice, the easier to produce good stories.
Obviously, it doesn't work the same way for everyone, but that's the same for all writing advice.
I'm glad you posted this, so thank you. Quantity versus quality is an argument people bring up constantly, and Tim nailed the answer. The better your craft, the higher the quality of words you produce. Those words can absolutely be produced at speed. You say Virgil wrote 1-2 lines a day. Asimov had 3 typewriters, and published over 500 words in his lifetime. Orson Scott Card wrote Ender's Game in two weeks. I've published 14 novels across a three year period, and my average on amazon across all those books is 4.5. It's higher for the non-fiction, which was written even more quickly.
I wrote a book called 5,000 Words Per Hour, and it's got a chapter about flow state. The whole goal of writing that quickly is to get into flow. The mechanics of what you are doing melt away, and you reach a low alpha brain state. This is something athletes and artists have been using for centuries, and is really gaining more definition as our scientific understanding of the brain continues to increase.
The short answer? Not quality OR quantity. Quality AND quantity.
I'd also like to add something I think people don't quite realize when they comment about quality vs. quantity. You spent over a week plotting each scene. I know each writer is different, but when I craft, all that time finding the "quality" is in how well the story is plotted. It's truly the hangup. When you focus all your effort on getting that out of the way, the writing at that point shifts to the mechanics, or delivery of that plot. Therefore it becomes a matter of filling in the "pretty". Once I started plotting, thanks to Chris's videos, books, etc., I went from producing one book in 6 months, down to one every two months. I am grateful I allow myself to explore something new. It really paid off. :D
The flow state is really what ultimately sold me on this (and Rachel Aaron's book). Writing hundreds of thousands of words, it was easy to look back and see the times when the writing was flowing easily and I'd finish 10,000 words for the day. Then there were days where I had 300. I think every writer experiences that. So the idea of trying to maximize the time when the writing comes easily made a lot of sense. The writing on those 10k days wasn't lower quality. Usually it felt like it was better quality. So maximizing myself to stay in the flow more... well, that was a no-brainer. Framed that way, it matched all my previous experience.
How could anyone write 1-2 lines a day and not get frustrated? How would you even get into the flow of things? 1-2 lines and I'm not even warmed up yet
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YOU CAN WRITE 10.000 X DAY BUT WHAT NONSENSE ABOUT WHAT/ IS NOT QUANTITY BUT QUALITY
Do some research into flow state. Then go look at the novel Godswar on Audible, Goodreads, or Amazon. I wrote that book in 5 days, and it has better reviews than the novel that took four years.
Professionals operate at speed, and they produce their best words when in flow state. I've got neuroscience. You've got your caps lock key.
Speed in writing does not mean quality. Writing is not a sprint race.