Do you write chapters in order or out of it?
This is a topic I’ve encountered a few times with other writers, and it’s one that makes me very curious:
Do you write in order (every chapter or part strictly following the other) or do you write whatever section comes to mind first?
One of the things I’ve been working with when I see clients is whether they keep themselves to writing everything in order, no matter how stuck they might get over a scene or dialogue playing out properly, or do they write whatever they want to write?
I’ve generally given the advice that it’s whatever works for you. This is about finding out what your own method is, rather than finding some prescription methodology that leaves you stranded in the doldrums.
In the past, I’ve written ‘the bits I want to’ first, but when I came to writing Amnar books, I wrote in order, from the beginning to the end of the book. I often have a scene that I’m dying to get to, or a sequence I can’t wait to write out, but I use that as motivation to get through the bits that aren’t hooking me in so much.
Yet this isn’t strictly true. Because most of the Amnar books rely on a group of main characters rather than a single, central focal protagonist, there are a lot of subplots or perspectives to manage. I’ve frequently found myself going back over chapters and moving them around or adding new sections that come to mind only after I’m rather further into the story.
I like having this dynamic approach, like keeping only to a vague set of plot points rather than a strict outline. It can be a roller coaster ride at times, but it’s definitely fun.
In the past I have always begun thinking that I will write chapters in order only to discover a better beginning as I went along or a structure that works much better than the one I started with. So I don’t concern myself much any more with whether I am starting at the beginning.
My next venture, just begun, will involve writing chapters that I already know will end up near the back of the book. I’m OK with that because of my past experience.
I always write out of order.
The reason’s is actually simple. For each chapter, or arc or book, there’s a pivotal scene that actually justifies it’s very existence. I tend to write this scene first and everything falls into place around it. (Or it gets punched. Sometimes I have to break out the hammer, Traces of Chaos is incredible uncooperative sometimes.) It’s propably because I tend to write in “pictures” if that makes sense – I see that scene in my head, set up like a painting from the Renaissance or the Romanticismn, and then I try to describe what’s going on and how the people in that picture got there.
Of course that means that often enough I have a handful of great scenes barely tied together by a few words. And my words are always inedequate.
Very helpful. Awesome.
I find myself skipping from pivot to pivot and then filling in with smaller pivots to make it hang together right. Not necessarily all out of order but definitely not all in order at all either. Convoluted. LOL