Shaping Words:
I find that when I write, brainstorm, edit, etc. in my head, quite often it sounds great in my head. But then it can get muddled for anyone else or just not translate well. I often find the most useful first step is to find a concept from somewhere outside of me. I observe other people, read a story or idea in a book, ask a crazy question about how something is done, or whatever and then I start pondering how I can turn a kernel into a story concept. That much, I've said before. But if I stick to brainstorming in my head, often I don't get very far. So I'll talk it through a story concept with a friend, family member, my cat, anybody at all. Once I formulate it enough to put it into words, to say it out loud, it starts to shape itself into something more concrete. Concepts and ideas start to make sense when I say them out loud.
Teamwork:
What also helps is the other person often has ideas to improve my original concept. Speaking to someone about my ideas can have a synergistic effect on those ideas. They become more everything: more interesting, more profound, more coherent, more exciting. Ideas that stay in my head or on the page can remain dead. But speaking them out loud can bring them life. Case in point, over the weekend, I was thinking about how I've started looking closer at the people around me for traits and personal struggles and realized that most people I know have some kind of disability or issue with which they struggle. I'd started writing my first couple of books about people who just so happened to have some kind of disability since disabilities are so common in reality and so rare in fiction. Here is my blog on the topic. But as I talked about it out loud, it started to make more sense and become more of a philosophy and less of a nebulous idea. Brainstorming out loud may not work for some people, but it works for me.
Even after I have my ideas and sit down and write, this conceptualizing out loud with other people as I go along continues to be useful. I'm working on a middle grade series of books called Doomimals about kids and their pets fighting off armageddon at the paws of an evil army of animals. My kids in that age group are critical in helping my story keep going. I read them each chapter as I write it and ask them if it's entertaining, funny, and works for them. They, in turn, keep their writers' nets out to look for ideas to help my story progress. They are engaged and invested because I bring them in by reading and brainstorming out loud with them. This helps me with audience awareness as well. I also ask if something makes sense to someone, and sometimes the very act of hearing it outside my own head even in my voice can tell me if it works or not. This can also work for formulating the outline, the order of events, and just about everything else that goes into the writing process.
Editing:
Most importantly, my voice is critical in the editing process. I subscribe to the idea mentioned in the writers' movie Finding Forrester, that the first draft is to be written with the heart and the second with the head. I don't generally mess with editing until the whole thing is done or I get bogged down and get nowhere. I will probably blog about this later. But it's been said repeatedly that reading the manuscript out loud helps one slow down and catch errors one may just gloss over in one's head. I don't generally submit a blog until I've read it out loud at least once. It's best to actually print out the manuscript to give one a whole new angle, a whole new way of looking at the text.
Conclusion:
Basically, working through my writing process verbally improves my writing every step of the way. If I'm stuck in my own head, I may find what I'm working on doesn't make sense to me or to others in the long run. It also gets my creative juices flowing and helps me catch issues I wouldn't otherwise see.
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