BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing Novel writing/plotting techniques

Hello all! I'm currently working on my 2nd novel (first novel was a flop) and I'm trying to do it differently from my first novel. On the first one, I had all these great ideas, and I wrote and wrote and wrote - then put them all together - and it ended up pretty disjointed. When I gave it out to be critiqued by a couple of people, not one of them could get into it. Looking back I can see why. Now, I'm trying a different approach. I'm trying to see the entire big picture and then filling in the detail. Imagine walking into a room and taking in the entire scene, then slowly absorbing all the details and the things happening in the room. In other words, I started with a very simple outline of only a few lines, then I added a few more lines to each line, then more details to each of those details, etc. It's like expanding from the middle and giving the book life. Does anyone else work that way?

Everyone has different ways of wrting. I write in my head for awhile and then type it. That way I avoid being too critical before things are really fleshed out. Your way is good if it works for you. That is all that matters. The thing I think is interesting is that some authors don't know how their characters are going to turn out while they are writing!

I do a lot of visualizing also. I find it very hard to write unless I've visualized being in the action. Yeah, I know, I've heard that many times - I find that really interesting that some authors don't know their characters until they write them. I guess Stephen King does that and I just can't fathom it.