Just some mostly useless musings about my writing process.
I write out a general outline and complete my worldbuilding before I put the story on paper. I know the major plot points before I begin, and I generally know how it is going to end. Sometimes I even have very detailed scenes in my head.
Now, when it comes time to actually write the story, I have taken two different approaches. The first is to sit and write the novel chronologically, beginning to end. The second is to write the scenes I am most excited about, and essentially skip around, filling in the plot. I will share here what I found to be the pros and cons of both methods.
Jumping around. The pros are obvious. You know when you just have that scene in your head that you can’t stop thinking about, and want to get onto paper? Maybe you know the ending of your story and you don’t want to wait to write it. You can do that. While it’s fresh, you can get it down. I’ve found that writing when you are feeling inspired yields much better results than writing something you just aren’t that into. It seems counterintuitive to NOT write something that is inspiring you.
There are cons to this, however. For me, I found that I ended up wasting a lot of time. Why? Because I would write all the scenes I was excited about, and then spend forever trying to keep track of where they all were and how to get my characters from exciting scene one to exciting scene two, etc. Then, when I finally made it happen, I would get to the scene and find out that my character had grown in some way that made that scene implausible or something had happened that took one of the characters to an unexpected place, and I’d have to scrap the whole thing entirely. Total waste.
Writing chronologically. This can be challenging. Sometimes brutal. When I used this method I forced myself to write the story from beginning to end, no skipping around, no “cheating”. The biggest pro to this is that it forced me to do the work. There will always be parts of your novel that are a struggle. There may be a character that’s difficult to write, or maybe there are complex issues to tackle that require some research to get it right. Maybe it’s a battle scene that is essential to the story but you really struggle writing battle scenes. Or dialogue. Whatever it is, not allowing yourself to skip over it forces you to get it done, and those scenes that are trying to burst from you? Writing those are the reward. For me, it is motivating. Writing all the fun (or let’s be honest, easy) scenes first is kind of like eating your desert first and having to finish your veggies later. It’s a lot easier to get your veggies down when you have desert to look forward to.
So what about the cons? You may wait so long to write the scene that’s in your head that by the time you get to it, it feels old and tarnished, or you forget it all together. You could also get so stuck on a difficult part that you lose motivation and just don’t finish your novel. These things were not the case for me, but I can see how they could be for someone else.
Ultimately, each writer is different and will find what works best for them, but I think the key is to be open to trying different approaches.
Liz Highland 