Linear or episodic writing?

Katharine Tree said:

I'm a pantser and a linear storyteller. Once or twice I have written a scene out of sequence because I was just dying to write it--and it ended up being re-written many, many times because by the time I worked the linear narrative up to that point, the original version didn't work, but I was so attached to it I couldn't imagine any other way for the scene to work. Thus do I flounder.

So, I have learned my lesson. But everybody is different and many people write out of order.

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That bolded part is exactly what happens to me.

And let me tell you a story about a recent experience I had writing out of sequence.

I spent Thursday and Friday squeezing out three of the last five chapters of my wip. Then yesterday, while I was digging through the many open files in one of my (many) word processors, I came across those same scenes written in different words. "WTF?" I said.

A little reading roused my laggardly memory. Checking the date on the file told me loud and clear that I'd written the chapters nine months ago. I then uttered many colorful words. Those (old) chapters are good. Maybe better than the ones I just wasted two days on. I will now spend more days deciding which to keep. And, knowing how I operate, I will probably do a lot of cutting, and pasting, and more time wasting.

Reziac said:

. . . it sounds like you've stolen my brain.

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I knew it!

Hublocker said:

In my current project I wrote a few out-of-sequence scenes and even a couple chapters that I hope to include in the final manuscript, but just recently started at the beginning and have been writing in that direction to see what happens to my characters as they work together.

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Well, don't forget those out-of-sequence scenes.

Linear here.

My outline usually begins as a handful of scenes, characters and moments, though. I write everything that sounds good on a notecard or post-it and then start arranging, filling in, adding and discarding until I have a complete story. Then, I turn that into my outline and write from beginning to end.

WriteMinded said:

And let me tell you a story about a recent experience I had writing out of sequence.

I spent Thursday and Friday squeezing out three of the last five chapters of my wip. Then yesterday, while I was digging through the many open files in one of my (many) word processors, I came across those same scenes written in different words. "WTF?" I said.

A little reading roused my laggardly memory. Checking the date on the file told me loud and clear that I'd written the chapters nine months ago.

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Sounds like you need to get your time machine serviced.

Always linear.

I'm an outliner, but my outline is always quite fluid and I'm continually refining and updating it while writing, because drafting is a whole different kettle of fish than outlining. Linear for me is the only way I can get a natural feel to the character development. For me characters don't come alive until they start walking and talking in prose rather than in an outline. And once they are alive they are unpredictable.

You might almost say I'm a plot outliner and a character pantster. Hmm... never thought of it that way before.

Reziac said:

Sounds like you need to get your time machine serviced.

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Good idea. Where do you take yours?

I took it to someone in 1862 B.C. Problem is, I haven't seen it since. You'd think it'd be fixed by now??

I write a linear first draft and then I go back to fill in the stuff that is missing. Sometimes that means whole scenes get backfilled and added (so the old beginning of the novel becomes the beginning of Chapter 2, for example) but it doesn't usually mean major changes to what is already established.

I'm a pantser and I write in linear fashion. However, I've been known to mentally outline where I desire to go with scenes that I'd like to see. When the time comes, if the scene works, I use it. If not, oh well. I'm on my first draft and I know where I will fill in or delete some things in linear fashion.

I generally write in a linear fashion. I find it hard to get the flow if I write out of order. But there are always exceptions. Sometimes I just have to go back and add something. And sometimes there is a scene that won't let me sleep until I write it, even if it's way ahead.

Reziac said:

I took it to someone in 1862 B.C. Problem is, I haven't seen it since. You'd think it'd be fixed by now??

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I might be there tomorrow. Want me to pick it up for you?

I'm a lookback pantser, and I'm a bit of an extreme pantser (panzer?). So everything I write is based on what I've already written--I can't write ahead because I haven't got a clue what's coming. Not a scooby.

Except for this one novel. I still haven't got a clue, but I've just been writing out random scenes as they occur to me. Completely random. Then I figure I'll print them all out and number them into some sort of coherent order. Because apparently I like my life to be difficult and confusing, that's why.

I outline, sort of. It's more of a spiral approach, sort of snowflake with out the one sentence, one paragraph, summaries. (I have started writing those summaries after I get a bit into the story but they aren't where I start.) I put down the main events of the parallel plot lines (good guys, bad guys, sub plots) as a matrix.

Then, similar to the Snow Flake method, I go back to characters and make sure their background would result in a person that would act like they do at the beginning of the story. I seldom put it in the story other than perhaps an off hand remark.

Then I switch to Holly Lisle's Line-for-scene approach and convert the matrix into a list of scenes that I gather into chapters - this is when the story moves into WriteWay Pro where it will be written. All the research is moved into or linked to from within WWP as well. All the character data is in too. Any of them are subject to change, deletion, or whatever as the story is written, but there is something in the list.

At that point I've moved the process from Word and EXCEL into WriteWay and I start writing. It gets interrupted to do research as required. I've no problem jumping chapters but I try to leave 'candy bar' chapters and scenes, the ones that I really really want to write, unwritten and earn my way to them by completing the preceding chapters.

So far, it works.

Edited to add: Please forgive typos - I'm still getting used to this Mac keyboard. And yes, I have WriteWay Pro running on this Mac 5K under Parallels in a 64 bit Win 7 Pro virtual machine. It works great, so far.

Fitch

Fitch said:

Edited to add: Please forgive typos - I'm still getting used to this Mac keyboard. And yes, I have WriteWay Pro running on this Mac 5K under Parallels in a 64 bit Win 7 Pro virtual machine. It works great, so far.

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But now my brain hurts. I used to have some weird setups like that on my old DOS machines, where one species of DOS would boot out of another for reasons I can thankfully no longer remember.

WriteMinded said:

I might be there tomorrow. Want me to pick it up for you?

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Sure! And if you will, could you pick up some spare parts?

Shunter said:

Except for this one novel. I still haven't got a clue, but I've just been writing out random scenes as they occur to me. Completely random. Then I figure I'll print them all out and number them into some sort of coherent order. Because apparently I like my life to be difficult and confusing, that's why.

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Haha, I know that one. My first novel was written as 56 isolated scenes, in absolutely no order (I started somewhere in the middle, and wrote both ends last). That it hangs together as well as it does is miraculous. Novel #7 currently consists of several major and initially unrelated storylines which nonetheless insist that they're all the same story. Fortunately the ties-the-mess-together scene is already here, so it's just a matter of getting everyone to that spot. Just like herding cats!!

I brainstorm totally out of order, but once I start writing it's all linear. Always has been. I foreshadow as I go, not knowing at all what I'm going to do with the little bits of information, and then later it hits me, and I know exactly what to do with it.

My friend once asked: don't you want to get to the cool scenes first. To me, the scene I'm writing is always the cool scene. It's always about now.

I'm a planner, and I write linear. I'm an accountant, so this appeals to my methodical nature. Plan out the scenes and start at scene 1. Write the rest as they go.

I don't break it into chapters until I'm done, and I know I'll go back and rewrite, especially the opening scene and the ending scene. But still, that's how it gets done, usually about 2K a day.