The Evolution of Your Writing Process

Welcome to “The Evolution of Your Writing Process,” where we take you on an insightful journey through the real-life ups and downs of mastering the art of storytelling.  In this informative presentation, you’ll discover how every writer’s process grows and adapts over time-often in surprising ways.

Whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your voice, this post unpacks the lessons learned from millions of words written, stories abandoned, and characters brought to life.

You’ll find practical advice on crafting authentic dialogue, building emotional connections with your characters, and evolving your writing for both print and audio formats.  Plus, we’ll share tips on using sensory details to create immersive worlds and why understanding the business side of writing is the final step in your creative evolution.

Dive in to learn how you can transform your writing process and tell stories that truly connect with readers

Embrace Evolution: How Your Writing Process Grows Over Time

Why Embracing Evolution Matters

Every writer’s journey is a story of growth.  As you write more, your skills, style, and storytelling instincts naturally evolve.  The process isn’t always linear-sometimes you’ll write millions of words that never see the light of day, and that’s not just normal, it’s essential.  These “practice” stories are stepping stones, not failures.  They help you refine your craft, experiment with new techniques, and discover what truly resonates with both you and your readers.

“I have almost 3 million words worth of stories and content that’s written and will never see the light of day.  To give you an idea, that’s 20 books worth of published content that I’ve written, and I just don’t like it.”

Learning from Early Writing Process Missteps

Your first stories might not be masterpieces.  They might be downright embarrassing.  That’s part of the process.  Early on, you might write about places you’ve never been or topics you don’t fully understand, starting a leprechaun story in Dublin, Ireland, without ever having visited or researched the city.  These initial stumbles are valuable.  They teach you to “write what you know,” and encourage you to seek authenticity in your storytelling.

From Self-Insert to Character Empathy

As your process matures, you’ll notice a shift from self-insert narratives to developing genuine empathy for your characters.  Writing from personal experience can be powerful, but it’s equally important to step into the shoes of characters who are nothing like you.  This evolution helps you create richer, more nuanced stories with emotional depth.

“Because ‘Symbiote’ was modern military and the final several chapters are basically one long, intense battle… it was like 30 days of brutal combat related nightmares, which was unfun.”

Adapting Dialogue and Description

One of the biggest leaps in a writer’s evolution comes from refining dialogue and world-building.  What works on the page may not translate to audio, and vice versa.  Learning to adapt your dialogue for different formats, and using tools like text-to-speech to “hear” your writing, can reveal awkward phrasing you might otherwise miss.  Adding sensory details, like the grit of dust or the smell of a city street, makes your world more immersive and your characters more believable.

Iterating Through Practice and Writing Process Feedback

Evolution doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s shaped by feedback, editing, and the willingness to revisit and rewrite your work.  Sometimes, this means overhauling entire books to improve flow, perspective, or emotional resonance.  Each revision is a chance to level up your craft.

The Ongoing Writing Process Journey

Embracing evolution means accepting that your writing process is never truly finished.  There’s always more to learn, whether it’s mastering story arcs, deepening character relationships, or navigating the business side of publishing.  The willingness to grow, adapt, and experiment is what transforms a writer from a beginner into a seasoned storyteller.

“It has probably been about 15 years that I’ve been writing books and telling stories, publishing and telling stories.  So that’s where I’m sitting right now. We’ll see where we go in the future…”

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t fear abandoned drafts-they’re vital practice.
• Learn from your early mistakes and let them guide your growth.
• Develop empathy for your characters, not just yourself.
• Adapt your writing for different formats and audiences.
• Keep evolving, your best work is always ahead of you.

In The Writing Process: Write What You Know: Bringing Authenticity to Your Stories

Why “Write What You Know” Matters

One of the most powerful lessons in the evolution of any writer’s process is the importance of grounding your stories in real experiences and knowledge.  When you write about places, professions, or emotions you truly understand, your storytelling gains depth and credibility.  The transcript shares a vivid example: an early attempt at writing about leprechauns in Dublin, Ireland, a city the author had never visited.  The story fell flat, and the lack of authentic detail was obvious not just to the writer but to the audience as well.  This early “kick in the teeth” became a turning point, highlighting that readers can sense when a story lacks genuine insight.

Learning from Early Writing Process Missteps

Many writers begin by imitating genres or settings they haven’t experienced firsthand.  Without research or personal connection, these stories often feel hollow.  The transcript’s author recalls struggling through a school assignment set in a distant city, which led to embarrassment and a long break from storytelling and the writing process.  This moment of failure, however, planted the seed for a more authentic approach in later works.

Drawing from Real-Life Experience

The real breakthrough came with the “Symbiote” series modern military science fiction story rooted in the author’s military background.  By weaving recent personal experiences and real historical events into the narrative, the writing took on a new level of realism and emotional intensity.  The transcript describes how the process of writing “Symbiote” was both cathartic and challenging, as it often meant reliving difficult memories and even nightmares.  This deep connection between author and material created a story that felt vivid and true, resonating with readers in a way that earlier, less authentic efforts never could.

Key Takeaway: When you write what you know, you’re not just sharing facts-you’re sharing feelings, perspectives, and lived truths that make your story come alive.

Balancing Self-Insert with Character Development

While drawing from personal experience can add authenticity, it’s also important to maintain a healthy distance between yourself and your characters.  The transcript notes that “Symbiote” sometimes blurred the line between author and protagonist, making the story intensely personal but also emotionally taxing.  Later works, like the “Guardsman” series, found a better balance by combining personal knowledge with imaginative character creation.  This allowed for more nuanced storytelling, where characters were shaped by real experiences but still maintained their own distinct identities.

Tip: Use your expertise and memories to inform your writing, but let your characters grow beyond your own story.  This balance leads to richer, more compelling fiction.

Practical Steps for Writing What You Know

• Reflect on your own experiences and consider how they might inform your stories.
• If you’re venturing into unfamiliar territory, do the research: read, interview, and immerse yourself as much as possible.
• Don’t be afraid to revisit difficult emotions or memories if they serve the story and take care of your well-being in the process.
• Remember, authenticity doesn’t mean autobiography. Use your knowledge as a foundation, then let your imagination build the rest.

Writing what you know is more than a cliché-it’s a proven path to stories that connect, engage, and endure.

Develop Character Empathy

Empathy is the heart of compelling storytelling.  When you, as a writer, truly empathize with your characters, your readers can’t help but be drawn into their struggles, triumphs, and heartbreaks.  This section explores how to cultivate that deep connection and why it matters for your writing.

Why Character Empathy Matters In Your Writing Process

Empathy bridges the gap between writer, character, and reader.  To write characters that feel real, you must understand their motivations, fears, and desires, even if they’re nothing like you.  This emotional connection is what makes readers care about the outcome and remember your story long after the last page.

In the transcript, the author describes how writing the “Symbiote” series required drawing from personal, often painful, military experiences.  The close emotional proximity-sometimes bordering on self-insertion-resulted in intense, authentic characters.  However, this also made the writing process emotionally taxing, as the author relived difficult memories to bring the story to life.

Techniques for Building Empathy with Your Characters

• Put Yourself in Their Shoes: Like method acting, immerse yourself in your character’s perspective.  Ask: What are they feeling? What do they want? What’s at stake for them?  The transcript highlights how switching perspectives from male to female protagonists, or even to the villain, forced the author to adopt mindsets very different from their own.
• Draw from Real Life: Use your own experiences as a foundation, but don’t be afraid to extrapolate.  The author’s military background informed the realism in “Symbiote,” while the emotional connections in “The Innkeeper’s Niece” drew on understanding relationships and interpersonal dynamics.
• Rapid Character Development: Sometimes, you need to create and connect readers to a character quickly-especially if their time in the story is short.  In “Blood Debts,” the challenge was to make readers care about characters who would not survive the chapter.  This requires efficient, vivid characterization and immediate emotional stakes.

Balancing Empathy and Objectivity

While deep empathy helps you write authentic characters, it’s equally important to maintain some distance.  The transcript discusses the necessity of “divorcing personal ego from the character.”  If you become too attached, it can be difficult to let characters go, especially when the story demands it.

• Let Characters Stand Alone: Your characters should feel like independent people, not just extensions of yourself.  This independence allows for richer, more unpredictable storytelling.
• Embrace Difficult Choices: Sometimes, you must make hard decisions about a beloved character, for example, to serve the story’s emotional arc.  The author notes the challenge of developing strong emotional bonds with characters, only to write their deaths, but recognizes this as essential for authentic storytelling.

Practical Exercises to Deepen Character Empathy

• Write a scene from your character’s point of view, focusing on their sensory experiences: do they see, hear, smell, or feel?
• Interview your character as if you’re a journalist. Ask them about their past, hopes, and regrets.
• Rewrite a pivotal scene from another character’s perspective to explore different emotional responses.

By practicing these techniques, you’ll find your characters become more vivid, your stories more immersive, and your readers more invested in every twist and turn.

Empathy isn’t just a tool-it’s the magic that transforms words on a page into living, breathing worlds.

Master Dialogue for Every Format

Why Dialogue Needs to Evolve

Dialogue is more than just characters talking; it’s the heartbeat of your story, shaping pacing, character, and immersion.  As your writing process matures, you’ll notice that dialogue must adapt depending on your medium.  What works in print may fall flat in audio, and vice versa.  Recognizing and embracing this evolution is crucial for any writer aiming to reach a wider audience.

Print vs. Audio: Key Differences

When writing for print, it’s common to use the classic structure:

“Open quote, text, comma, close quote, so-and-so said.”

This works well on the page, where readers can easily track who’s speaking.  However, in audio formats like audiobooks or podcasts, this style can become confusing, especially if a single narrator is voicing multiple characters without distinct vocal cues.  Without clear speaker tags at the start of each line, listeners may quickly lose track of who is talking, making the story hard to follow.

Adapting Dialogue for Audio: The Next Step In Your Writing Process

To create a seamless listening experience, it’s essential to:

• Identify who is speaking at the beginning of each line, especially during rapid exchanges.
• Avoid long stretches of dialogue without speaker tags.
• Use descriptive cues that help the listener visualize the scene and understand the emotional context.

This realization often comes after hearing your work read aloud.  Many writers discover, sometimes painfully, that dialogue that reads smoothly on the page can sound awkward, repetitive, or unclear when spoken.  This was a hard-earned lesson that led to extensive, sometimes hundreds of thousands of words, ensuring clarity and engagement in audio adaptations.

Tools and Techniques for Better Dialogue

One of the most effective ways to refine your dialogue for any format is to listen to it.  Modern word processors like Microsoft Word and add-ons for Google Docs can read your text back to you.  This process reveals awkward phrasing, unnatural rhythms, and unclear speaker transitions that might slip past visual editing.

Listening to your story at an accelerated pace makes jarring or confusing dialogue stand out, allowing you to make targeted improvements.

Bringing Dialogue to Life with Description

Great dialogue isn’t just about what’s said; it’s about how it’s said and what’s happening in the world around your characters.  Embedding sensory details and actions into your dialogue tags can make scenes more immersive.

For example:

“The dust in his teeth ground against his lips as he shouted over his shoulder…”

This technique helps readers or listeners feel the environment and the character’s emotions, deepening their connection to the story.  Describing smells, sounds, and physical sensations can transport your audience directly into your world, making every conversation more vivid and memorable.

Your Writing Process: Continuous Improvement

Mastering dialogue is an ongoing writing process.  As you grow as a writer, you’ll find new ways to make your characters’ voices distinct and your scenes more dynamic-whether your story is destined for print, audio, or both.  The willingness to adapt, revise, and embrace new tools is what sets successful storytellers apart.

By refining your dialogue for every format, you ensure your story resonates no matter how it’s experienced.

Honing Your Writing Process & Building Immersive Worlds

Why Immersion Matters

An immersive world is the difference between a story that feels flat and one that pulls readers in so deeply they forget they’re reading.  As a writer, your goal is to make your settings and scenes feel as real as possible, engaging all the senses and grounding your characters in a living, breathing environment.  This level of detail not only enhances the reader’s experience but also strengthens the emotional connection to your story.

Engage the Senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, and Touch

One of the most effective ways to immerse your audience is by layering sensory details throughout your narrative.  Don’t just describe what your characters see; readers feel the grit of dust in their teeth, hear the chaos of a battlefield, or smell the pungent streets of a medieval city.  For example, when a character shouts over their shoulder, describing the dust grinding against their lips instantly creates a visceral connection.  Everyone knows what wind-blown dust feels like, but unless you put that into your writing, readers may not imagine it.  By deliberately including these sensory cues, you help your audience experience the world alongside your characters.

Authenticity in World-Building

Authenticity comes from understanding the realities of your setting, if it’s fictional.  If your story takes place in a medieval city, consider the historical context: crowded streets, limited access to clean water, and the ever-present threat of disease.  Mentioning details like the lack of modern sewage or the importance of beer-making for clean water not only grounds your world in reality but also adds depth and believability.  These small touches can make your fantasy or historical setting feel lived-in and genuine.

Dialogue as a World-Building Tool, Critical To Your Writing Process

Dialogue isn’t just for advancing the plot; it’s a powerful tool for world-building.  When characters interact, let their words and actions reveal the world around them.  Instead of relying solely on exposition, embed details in how characters speak, what they notice, and how they react to their environment.  For example, a character might complain about the stench of the city or the discomfort of their armor, moments adding texture without slowing down the narrative.

Evolving Your Descriptive Technique

As your writing matures, so should your approach to description.  Early drafts might focus on telling the reader what’s happening, but as you gain experience, you’ll learn to show the world through your characters’ lived experiences.  Practice adding sensory and environmental details to your dialogue and action scenes.  Listening to your writing read tools like text-to-speech can help you catch awkward or unnatural phrasing, ensuring your world feels authentic and your descriptions flow naturally.

Balancing Detail and Pacing In The Writing Process

While immersive details are crucial, it’s important not to overwhelm the reader.  Strike a balance between rich description and narrative momentum.  Use sensory cues to enhance key moments, especially when you want the reader to feel present in the scene.  Let the world press in on your characters, shaping their actions and decisions, but always keep the story moving forward.

By focusing on these techniques, you’ll create worlds that readers don’t just visit-they inhabit.  Immersive world-building is an ongoing process, evolving as your craft grows.  Keep experimenting, keep refining, and watch as your stories come alive in the minds of your audience.

Understand the Business: Turning Your Writing Process Into a Sustainable Venture

The final evolution in any writer’s journey is realizing that storytelling is not just an art’s business.  If you want your stories to reach readers and support your creative life, you need to approach writing with a business mindset.  This section explores what that means and how you can take practical steps to build a strong foundation for your writing career.

Laying the Foundation: Why Business Matters for Writers

It is not all just savoring the writing process!

After years of honing your craft, it’s easy to focus solely on the creative process.  But to sustain your writing and pay the bills-you must also master the business side.  Publishing isn’t just about putting your book out there; it’s about ensuring your work is shared properly and reaches the right audience.  This means understanding the basics of publishing, marketing, and administration.

Writers often spend years developing their skills, but many overlook the necessity of having strong business systems in place.  Without this foundation, even the best stories might remain unread.  Treating your writing as a business is the key to long-term success and creative freedom.

Key Business Skills Every Writer Needs In Their Writing Process

1. Professional Communication

• Clear, concise, and correct communication is essential for everything from pitching to publishers to interacting with readers and collaborators. Business writing differs from creative writing: it must be direct, reader-focused, and easy to scan.
• Use the 5Cs of communication: clarity, correctness, courtesy, coherence, and completeness.

2. Publishing Know-How

• Learn the ins and outs of self-publishing, traditional publishing, and hybrid models.  Each path has its requirements, from manuscript formatting to distribution and royalties.
• Understand contracts, rights, and the importance of professional editing and cover design.

3. Marketing and Branding

• Building an author platform is crucial.  This includes maintaining a website, engaging on social media, and connecting with your audience through newsletters or blogs.
• Effective marketing helps your stories find their readers and turns casual fans into loyal supporters.

The Writing Process: Making the Shift: From Artist to Entrepreneur

Transitioning to a business mindset doesn’t mean sacrificing your creative soul.  Instead, it empowers you to share your stories widely and sustain your writing life.  The real fun comes from seeing your work in readers’ hands and knowing you have the systems in place to keep creating.

The final step in the evolution of your writing process is embracing the business side so you can keep telling stories, reach more readers, and build a lasting legacy.

By integrating business principles into your writing journey, you ensure your stories don’t just exist-they thrive.

Writing Process – Conclusion:

In conclusion, “The Evolution of Your Writing Process” offers an informative and personal look at how storytelling skills develop over time, highlighting the real-world lessons every writer can apply to their craft.

From the early struggles of writing what you don’t know to the breakthrough of authentic, emotionally resonant stories, this presentation unpacks the journey of refining dialogue, building immersive worlds, and learning to empathize with characters.  You’ll gain insights into the importance of adapting your writing for different formats, using feedback tools like text-to-speech, and ultimately recognizing the business side of sharing your stories with the world.

Whether you’re just starting or looking to take your writing to the next level, these hard-earned lessons can help you evolve into a more effective, engaging storyteller.

Don’t forget to visit our supporting post for even more actionable tips and resources to support your writing journey!

One great place to visit is our post on Character Dialogue or others in our Character Development writing section.