I’ve been plotting my novel and I now have all my scenes mapped out. One think that occurred to me was that I had a clearer idea how some scenes will play out than others and then I remembered that, when they make movies, it’s actually rare for them to film scenes in order. So I was curious, do any novelists write in a similar way or do you all start writing at the beginning of the story and just keep going until the End?
Obviously I’m not talking about reordering scenes after they’ve been written, thinking more at the first draft stage if that makes sense.
*I know it can apply to other forms of writing but I’m talking specifically about novels in this instance.
For me, the main strength of Scrivener is its ease in writing out of sequence. In the formative stage of a novel, you don’t really even know what the sequence is. There’s a chronology, of course, but that isn’t always the right sequence of presentation.
Scenes, and research, have a way of triggering other scenes that you might not have thought of. Scenes that seemed crucial in the outlining stage often become irrelevant when you later write a scene that compresses four previous scenes into one.
I tend to write the opening first, writing and rewriting until it more or less says what I want to say. Then I write the ending. All the stuff in between tends to get written as it occurs to me, the whole coming together in little snippets that get joined together or split apart or moved far away or consolidated, all in an effort to bridge that unknown gulf between Once Upon a Time and The End,
Having outlined my novel and written the first draft for a number of scenes, I’ve just rewritten the first chapter for the third time based on the drafts for the later scenes and I have to say, it’s the first time I’ve been happy with that chapter.
That’s not to say hat it won’t get rewritten again, it is after all still a first draft.
uhmmm
im not really good about writings, i mean i feel im not writer yet ><
but i have been writing my story and its a fiction story in the right way or at least thats what have learn from YouTube videos, anyway my opinion my not be perfect but could help/inspire
so my process now is writing all the story the way i see it as keywords/titles/points/scenes in order, but sometime i had idea to twist things or to help me build a better story or events, so i write it down just not to forget it and mark it with something to remind me where is going to fit and why, this might be like in the start or middle or end of what im writing.
i have many question about alot of things myself, but i wont learn anything unless i go through it, and what im struggling with lately is writer block but i know it normal and i have to be patient about it and what im doing actually going to minimize this struggle in the future on the actual writing i guess .
Your experience seems similar to mine. I’ve plotted out my novel and separated it into scenes with a brief description of each using the corkboard, I shall see if everything stays in that order.
I’m not sure it matters how you do things. What matters is the end result. Dickens must have started The Pickwick Papers without the faintest idea of how things were going to proceed because he was supposed to be writing a text to accompany illustrations that were to be made by someone else. And the work was to be published in weekly instalments. So the work is very episodic and doesn’t really have much of a plot arc over the whole novel. I guess the work is still read and enjoyed all these years later because the characters and the descriptions are so vivid. Mr Jingle is a classic. Other stories depend very much on the plot and how it unfolds. I suppose writers like Agatha Christie couldn’t really afford to get the clues in the wrong order or the whole structure of the work would fall apart. Though other writers are happy to play with this sort of convention by having the “revelation” at the beginning instead of the end. So I doubt that it matters. Writing is a craft, and it takes time to learn. Some people seem to learn it by imitating other writers, while some seem to strike out on their own from the beginning and learn from their own experiments. And to me it seems self-evident that what works for one person may not work for another.
I often write my scenes out of order. And even re-order them later to find the right “fit” / “alignment” for the story. Yes, there is occasional rewriting to do to support that. But hey, that’s what being a writer is all about, right?
That is a lesson I have learned. From now on, I will ALWAYS block out the ending before I get very far into the story. My problem now is my story doesn’t want to end where it’s supposed to
Endings are like that. Sometimes the way you think a story should end is entirely unlike the way it actually ends. Sort of like life. But unlike life, you have a chance to revise the beginning and the middle to suit the ending. If, in fact, the ending truly is suitable.
I need help ensuring I have the necessary elements to make a good story and finally settled on the Hero’s Journey version of Freytag’s Pyramid. This is probably very weird but my process is to think about the story mentally. Once I have a general plot in my head, I start laying out the plot outline using Mindnode, where I set up a template using the Hero’s Journey story structure.
I write in scenes for everything. I already have many scenes in mind. So, I write those scenes. Then I begin to flesh out the story line. Oftentimes, one scene leads me to another and the story grows. Sometimes, I have to go back and revise my inciting incidents as the storyline evolves.
I wrote about 200,000 words for the first book, and during editing, cut a lot out because I was all over the place. I’m now using a lot of those scenes in book two. Book one was covered a steep learning curve while I wrestled with technique, software, and process. Book two is more organized, and hopefully better.
I’m writing the scenes as they come to my head. I’m not revising until I have the entire plot written. I’ll revise extensively. I write the scenes as they come to me, not in the order they’ll eventually appear.
An answer is in Write A Novel In A Day.
If you have a structure, you can write ALL simultaneously.
A corollary is that you can write in any order.
I write the beginning, the end, bits from anywhere, and check the plot points are roughly in the right pages as I write. This lets you do things as they occur to you rather than having notes to manage into text later.
The only version is the final version. So how you go about is the freedom you award yourself. You can do whatever you want.
This is an older post, but I think still a great discussion:
I think I’m what they call a plantser. I get an idea, develop quickly in a more full concept and then do what I’ve starting thinking of as a ‘drop outline’, something that can take as little as 15-30 minutes. I then just start writing. At some point I need to stop and outline a little. Then I write some more. Outline some more. Write some more. A lot of the outlining is in the form of journaling: talking about the story, working through the ideas and problems on the page. I always write forward — which is to say I never go back and rewrite. What I’m looking for is a ‘finished’ zero draft, as imperfect and full of holes as it may be. Sometimes I jump ahead and write a scene, but I never go back and rewrite anything until the thing is finished. “Drive through to the end” is the idea, I think.
If you like plotting it all out in advance, then by all means that’s what you should do. If you’re still experimenting and trying to find your process, maybe try a hybrid approach. Outline a little; write a little. For me, what I write informs what I outline next — and in turn, what I then outline informs the writing that follows.
I know there are many successful writers who outline it all in advance, but I don’t see how you know what happens three quarters of the way through if you haven’t done the discovery that comes with writing the earlier parts of the story. To each their own, of course.
