My writing process 3

Last time we talked about the plot drafting.

In this entry I will talk about the third step of my writing process, which is the Story Draft, and this is the step where the heavy writing and production really starts. It may sound difficult or taxing, but it's actually the simplest one, however it is also the one that takes the most effort to complete.

The main difference between the plot draft and the story draft is that the former is just a series of ideas and events that make the base for the story you want to write; the latter is the actual draft for the story, and it includes scenes and dialogue.

To explain this point, I'll talk a little about the creation process of the story draft for my Castlevania fanfic Story of two souls. The idea for this one came after I played Dawn of Sorrows and it was basically a slice of life type of story between the monsters living in the castle.

After I did the plot draft and was satisfied with it, I began the process of drafting the actual story. First, I decided on the scenes and their definitive locations; this was easy because I only had to limit the location based on where the monsters from the game could be found. After that I started working on the dialogues; since the story is dialogue heavy, this took a while, as I had to write down who said what and with what emotion.

Once that was done, I had a very streamlined three scene (or three acts) story that used dialogues adequately for my purposes. After that, the next part of this step could start, and that is the actual writing before the final review. With this I mean that after deciding on the scenes and dialogues based on the plot draft, I could start writing the story itself, detailing the scenes and the lines of dialogues between the characters as I had planned beforehand.

When that was completed, the story was ready for the last step of this process: The final review.