Its been ages since I put pen to paper, or rather finger to keyboard on the novel I started.

Part of the trouble now is that I have some good ideas for some stuff that happens in the story that comes quite a way off where I have got to at the moment.

Would it be reasonable to jump to those sections of the story & then come back to the bit I've not quite figured out later on?

The main problem I can see is that if I jump forwards, I'll be writing without quite knowing of any character developments etc I might have come up with in the missing pages.
 

If you write all your candy bar scences up front, what incentive will you have to finish the story?

I would recommend writing straight through.
 

If you have to write out of order to keep writing, do it.

I disagree with the candy bar comment. All of your scenes should be candy bars. Just sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't.

got it?
 

I recently wrote a children's book (I know, don't laugh, it's 13K words long). We had plotted out a sequence of events, so I just wrote whichever section where I felt inspired.

I wrote the first part, then sprinkled through some others, and ended up with the last scene written about two-thirds of the way through the book.

Of course, we had a complete outline with a pretty meaty summary going by that time. I say 'we' not in the royal sense, but in the sense that I had a partner in the book development.

 

quote:

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All of your scenes should be candy bars. Just sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't.

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Skipping around PROS:
- You're writing *something*.
- You get those great ideas down on paper before you forget them.
- You keep the greater whole of the story fresh in your mind.
- Later scenes may make you think of something you wouldn't have thought of until that scene if you were writing straight through.

Skipping around CONS:
- As mentioned, filling in can be less thrilling.
- You may find that you have written later scenes that just don't make sense given what comes before them.
- You have your work cut out for you during rewrite because you have to get the progression of emotion/plot/character/etc. consistent from beginning to end.

Personally, I like to skip around. BUT I never do so without first having planned the entire thing from beginning to end. I don't write scenes in a vaccuum.
 

I have written stuff that way, and it worked just fine. I've written other stuff in the order in which it would be read and that worked, too.

I also strongly recommend that if you are going to write chapter whenever and chapter later on before you write chapter earlier, that you have a good outline, but even that can be worked around when you do the rewrites, if necessary.

Do what works, and sometimes you have to try it before you find out if it's going to work or not.
 

Of course, that's the writing of it, the sitting down and putting words on paper (or images on screen). When I work out the idea in my head, I'm going here and there and back and front and center and so on and so on...but when I write I start at something resembling the beginning and work my way to something resembling the end.
 

There are problems (you have to read and edit very tightly to keep consistency), and on short stuff I still tend to start at the beginning and write to the end. But for novels, I couldn't possibly complete one that way.
 

Lynda

[This message has been edited by Lynda (edited September 24, 2006).]
 

Like tchernabyelo, I'll write a short story from beginning to end (more often than not), but a novel's a bit more difficult. I liken writing a novel to putting together a 100,000-piece puzzle, only you don't have a cover image to help you (unless you count the outline; I don't, because my outline is a mindmap less than 100 words long, and detailing only major plotlines). Sometimes I'll get chunks completed of one section and move on to the next, and other times I'm flitting about here and there because that's where the muse has gone, and I have no choice but to follow.

Experiment, and go with what works. There's no right way, just right for you.
 

What if, halfway through a work, they realized a certain character or plot element was totally wrong, and something should be added or subtracted, either to completely change the outcome, or just improve an earlier part of the story, or there was simply a fact they needed and no internet or even telephones to turn to to check it? What were they supposed to do when the book was being serially published and readers waiting for the outcome?

Robert Louis Stevenson may not have published serially, but he dreamed stories in order and then wrote out the next day what he dreamed! Maybe that's the difference between me and successful novelists. Long works NEVER come to me in order--I have a scene here, a fragment there, a sort of a feeling elsewhere, to try to tie together. Certain elements may be very plain and others hazy with big blank patches in between. Sometimes I do dream about my stories, but it's usually my mind working overtime in desperation trying to fill in these blanks, and not many of my dream elements are usable. If someone knows a way to train one's dreams to accomplish useful work, do tell!

Although I might show an unfinished manuscript to some people for suggestions, I would never dare to try to publish anything without the WHOLE thing being finished! (What cracks me up is it took George Eliot two years to write "The Mill on the Floss" and me four years to read it!)