Sara asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

I am an admirer of your work. One of your greatest talents is creating whole, interesting characters that make you want to follow the story, and the complete worlds the characters inhabit. When I start one of your books, I know I will escape into another dimension. When you write, do you set the stage (place and time), or does the character evolution do that for you? Do you use outlines in your creative process?

Lois McMaster Bujold I've discussed my process in a number of places, including earlier in this column (probably more toward the beginning, scroll back), and in interviews and essays over the years. There's a mine of interviews here: http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Auth...

Also iirc in The Vorkosigan Companion https://www.amazon.com/Vorkosigan-Com... among other vendors.

But briefly, setting, plot, and character form feedback loops as I go; any of the three have served as start-points in different books, but character tends to be the most important for driving things forward. I use a rolling outline, a mess of general notes followed by scene-by-scene penciled memory aids that are halfway between notes and rough drafts, one scene at a time as I write. (Thinking it up and writing it down are two different phases for me, and the notes capture the thinking-it-up parts.) No way could I hold a whole book in my head on Day One; the next scene is about all I can manage, lather, rinse, repeat till done.

Ta, L.

flag