Dean Wesley Smith calls his approach to fiction “writing into the dark” and it’s the one I use which has so far resulted in what I feel is a satisfactory output of fictional text. The principles of this approach are very simple.
Essentially, writing into the dark means making up the story as you go; the dark is the mystery that exists without planning. In the words of a lot of people on the internet who don’t write but sure talk about it a lot, pantsing is superior to plotting. (I’ve noticed a lot of old authors are grossed out by the term “pantsing” because they associate it with pulling someone’s pants down, which is amusing to me).
Pantsing and plotting are often discussed as two equally valid strategies for writing, but I have to tell you, I think pantsing is much better; the most blocked writers I talk to are all plotters that need to be encouraged to start the damn story already and stop procrastinating with outlining, worldbuilding, etc., not panters who just can’t get their creative motor started for whatever reason. When you write into the dark, you don’t start with an outline. You can make one after you write to keep track of what the hell has been going on— you don’t have to be sloppy— but you’re trying to discover the plot as you write it, just like you would if you were the reader instead of the writer.
DW describes two voices in our minds: the creative voice and the critical voice. The critical voice likes to shout “no” a lot, stop you from doing things, give you depression, and worry about how other people think of you. The creative voice is fun and adventurous and genuine and childlike. That’s the one you want to listen to when you write into the dark. Someone can easily get stuck listening to their critical voice as they pore over their worldbuilding documents and tell themselves that they can’t possibly start Chapter 1 yet because they haven’t figured out how their fantasy world’s grain economy works. Actually such a writer is probably stuck on Chapter 2 because Chapter 1 is a lot of very boring overview of the extensive history of the fantasy world.
Writing into the dark and from the creative voice allows one to produce work at a fast rate that would surprise a lot of people; being prolific is important as an indie author because in many ways the best marketing for your book is another one of your books. Traditionally we think of an author putting out, what, one book a year as pretty fast, but if you trust your creative voice you can blow that out of the water. Specifically, you have to trust that the best writing comes from the creative voice: distinctly stylish and personal, fiery, passionate, risky, and beautifully messy. Therefore, logically, the revision process should be cut down to, well… nothing. Nothing except proofreading. So the philosophy of writing into the dark makes three daring claims that DWS often doesn’t cite explicitly but I will:
- Writing slowly doesn’t necessarily make a story better than writing quickly
- Revision doesn’t necessarily make a story better than sticking with how it turned out
- Revision doesn’t necessarily improve the writer’s ability better than writing a different story
More radically you could also claim that writing slowly and revision actually make a story worse, because you’re more likely to be in critical voice when you do them, and your critical voice will harangue you into sucking the individuality out of your stories just to be safe when really the thrilling apparent imperfections are what make your art your own in the first place.