Freelance Writing: How I Plan My Work
Freelance Writing: How I Plan My Work
WWW#83
As a freelancer, I often juggle many different projects. Over the years, I’ve developed a process that works for me and while it might not be the best for everyone, I wanted to share what I do so you can see how I plan my writing commission stories.
Have you ever felt lost or all over the place when you work on a story? Not outlining properly, having no editing plan, or writing with no direction can cause this. To help you avoid these pitfalls, let’s explore one way you can improve your process.
Where to Begin?
A story has a few key components. The plot, voice, and characters. But where do you start when you are writing a new story?
Everything needs to start with a plan. While the writing world is divided by pansters (no plan) and plotters (a plan) there is no one right way to do any of this. Even so, I strongly recommend having a plan and dividing your work into a set of goals when you begin a story. This can help direct your work in a more efficient manner.
If you don’t like outlining, planning can take on many forms! Have you ever created idea boards, notes, or graphs when developing an idea?
My Step-by-Step Writing Process
The stories I write are contract and deadline bound products for my clients. Much like a student writing on a deadline for class, I must complete my work within a limited time. To do this—and avoid making any mistakes—I follow a step-by-step plan every time I write. This helps me know exactly what I have to work on and keeps me from spending too much time on any singular step.
Here is what I do!
Research: I gather all the information I need about my story first. This way I don’t have to stop writing to look something up later on.
Outlining: I list out my plot points, chapters, and plan my word counts.
First Draft: Write the story! I work scene by scene to get the whole thing on paper.
Edit 1: This is my first read through of my draft. I focus on the piece’s voice, characters, plot, and big structural errors.
Edit 2: After the big problems have been fixed, I target sentence- and word-level edits to correct punctuation, grammar, and word usage.
Edit 3: On the third round, I should have most, if not all the kinks worked out. This is a final read through to catch any remaining mistakes. When I am done, I turn my story in!
The editing rounds are here to give me a goal every time I edit. Editing can be a bear. If you approach a story and try to edit everything at once, it’s easy to get burned out or get stuck because of all you need to do. But when you break that work up into different rounds with a specific goal for each one, that can help to lighten the load!
Conclusion
I try to make work as easy as possible when I approach a new project. I create an outline and plan my story first, I write everything down, and then I edit three times. This allows me to turn out stories quickly at a good quality. Now, this is not a one-size-fits-all kind of plan! If you find yourself needing to spend extra time on the outlining and research, do it! If you need smaller editing steps like one round for voice, and one round for characters, do it! My goal is to help you develop the mindset of breaking up your work into manageable chunks. I hope that no matter how you handle your work, this planning idea helps make your writing journey easier.