Flesh out

Seed

The first stage1 of this process is a method you can use to commit an idea to writing in a manner which will encourage it to develop. Elements of your text have begun to resolve themselves as threads ready to be drawn out. We need to build them out with detail in order to create the raw material which will later be refined into the finished draft.

Cerebral power

Iterative processes allow complex creations to emerge from simple repetition. All the repetition this process entails might seem counter-intuitive and inefficient. You’ll go through several steps that, taken individually, don’t produce much work. It’ll probably feel like a bit of a hassle.

But the power of the Subject-Verb-Object iteration is that it makes it easy on your head. It lets you channel your energies into writing rather than overthinking.

The outlining of structure and the writing of actual words will happen at the same time. The output of one iteration is the starting material for the next. You’ll dive in deeper, iterating over and over so that the book evolves organically. As with any evolutionary process; complexity arises from simple causes, repeated.

1. Tune your brain

As before, analyse your idea by expanding separately upon the subject, verb and object. You should find characters, concepts and events, either recorded directly or in a way that emerging immediately to you.

In the case of my book, the initial idea took the form of a logical progression but because it is driven not by concepts not characters I elected to make my point using three devices.

The evolutionary process behind creativity and human progress, demonstrated through the influence of Stoicism in Ancient Greece, Bletchley Park during WW2 and the process of deriving the DNA of a document.

Now explore the subject, verb and object of each item. This latest iteration should give you a few sentences per element. In the case of the first item:

Subject

Stoicism was a philosophy stating that wisdom comes with living in harmony with divine reason. Hithertoo, Greek philosophy had been that of the city state, not a world superpower. Influenced by Presocratics, Aristotelean logic, various Eastern / Judaic philosophies. Originated with Zeno of Citium.

Verb

Concludes that one should be indifferent to passions, emotions and pain because they distract one from the logos. Distinguished peoples only by their degree of barbarism.

Object

Justified the “civilising mission” of Rome. Filled a void left by Alexander’s globalisation of Greek perspective. Influenced various forms of thought that affect us today; it gave the Roman “civilising mission” a philosophical veneer and informed much Judaeo-Christian doctrine.

This is a really good time to begin writing out these thoughts as prose for your text. It’ll tune your brain to the text and give you plenty of nooks to explore later.

2. Soup

You already have a bunch of loosely-connected research. Or you have a brain like a sponge. Either is good.

Now is the time to plant your work in that soil of research. The roots will grow outward and the text will begin to sprout. Each element of the story (character, concepts, events) will be gradually fed information so that it can grow. So, for each character, consider the following:

• Name
• Character traits
• Upbringing and education
• Dreams / traumas
• Thoughts and desires
• Loves, hatreds, obsessions
• Physical descriptions and how they have changed and might change

If you’re writing a non-fiction book, consider answering for this:

• A summary of the main argument
• How the concept was interacted with other ideas.

Time to write. Write down snippets of text that reflect this information. You could even churn out whole scenes if you like. You should find that interesting facts will come out as you write which will, in turn, require expansion.

Concept and outline after iteration with research

By the time you’ve done this for the rest of your texts you’ll find you have a collection of documents that dive deep into the various elements of your story.

3. Hooks

The process of writing should have highlighted areas that need to be explored and fleshed out. It’s time to produce another iteration of subjects, verbs and objects, writing up along the way.

For instance, when diving into a character’s upbringing, you might want to consider this:

• Subject: Age, family tree going back a generation or two
• Verb: What kind of person does this make the character? Friendly, volatile, obsessive? How are they on course, or inclined to react to other characters?
• Object: How does the character remain as cast, and how are they remoulded? What sort of relationships does the character find himself in?

In general terms, it’s useful to explore details, particularly where relationships and conflicts are concerned because these provide the best hooks to bind the story together. Where writing non-fiction, consider how a given concept affects others:

• What is minimally necessary for the concept’s machinery to work?
• What is reductively necessary for the concept’s premises to work?
• The history of the idea’s ingredients, when they was first tied together.
• How has the concept changed?

The minimum required for the concept to work. Exploring how the concept evolved.

Narrative

You should find that for each of the key elements of your text you’ve collected a good amount of material and structured thought. You might be having some thoughts about narrative structure or plot. Notice how that is evolving without a great deal of forethought or design.

Perhaps the toilsome task of churning out a book is beginning to feel a little less daunting. Crucially, this method has allowed us to tease out the story threads created earlier. We’ve built structures while actually writing along the way. We’re now ready to recombine these structures back into a single text.

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