The Process: My Writing Method

During every classroom book talk that I’ve been invited to at least a handful of students would always ask me about my writing technique or if I had a particular method of writing. Growing up poor in rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia, making up stories and writing became a necessary escape and a form of survival for me. Between my early school years at John J. Wright and Robert E. Lee Elementary, I had a great training ground as a storyteller. During those elementary years, some of the teachers, on the first day of school, would have us stand up and tell the rest of the class what we did over the summer. I remember one particular summer when I was flying high up in the air, walking dangerous trails in another state, and even saw the open mouth of a mountain lion from a few feet away! (Yeah, right.) Actually, that particular summer, the most exciting thing I did was going bike riding through the Spotsylvania Battlefield Parks with my brothers and cousins. When you have classmates speaking about their summer vacations at Yellowstone and Disney World I just had to come up with something to compete with that and my bike trip through the parks wasn’t it. Ever since I was a young boy, I used to have these wild, weird dreams and sometimes I was so excited and fascinated by them that I couldn’t wait to tell somebody else. I remember telling a few kids during recess about this one particular dream that I had and they all looked at me as if I had lost my mind. This was a turning point in my early years because I became very particular about who I would share my stories and dreams with, and I soon became somewhat of a quiet little boy. One of my early teachers told me that I should write my dreams down, and ever since then it seems as though I can’t stop writing. And if you’re an aspiring writer and there are people around you who are giving you a look and maybe calling you crazy, well, don’t worry about it. Just remember that people tend to call anything that they don’t understand ‘crazy’. You just keep on writing. I haven’t changed my method of writing over the years, even with the advent of the constantly-changing techy devices we have nowadays. Whether I’m writing a screenplay, novel manuscript or a short story, I always draw up an outline and I always write out a basic character bible, especially for my main characters. Writing a basic character bible is extremely helpful because it makes it easier for you, as the writer, to remember where your character came from, why he or she talks or behaves in a certain way, and the character bible also helps you (as a writer) to prevent your characters from sounding the same. I would hand-write the first and second draft, and then, typically, the third draft gets typed up. The greatest advice I have for any aspiring writers is to pay close attention to your characters’ voices, and to make sure that each of your characters have their own unique voice, never sounding like anyone else within your story. – Randy Camp
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