a question for writers

[cellio]

This question is directed toward two groups: people who have completed fiction works, and people doing NaNoWriMo (national novel-writing month).

How do you structure your writing? Do you write your story linearly from beginning to end (not counting editing passes)? Or do you jump around, leaving place-holders for things you'll fill in later?

My impression, based on only a few data points, is that people doing NaNoWriMo tend to start at the beginning and write the story in order. (NaNoWriMo is all about cranking out the initial draft in a short period of time, so editing is discouraged.) I write fiction rarely and as a hobby only, but I've found that I tend to jump around somewhat -- I may start out writing linearly, but then I'll insert something like "[wild night in bar goes here]" so I can write the next part, because I'm not feeling inspired to write about wild nights right now but I do have inspiration for the aftermath. Do people who write fiction more seriously do that, or am I just quirky?

I find myself wondering whether NaNoWriMo builds productive habits, encourages destructive habits, or is just plain orthogonal to conventional writing.

Comments

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

I'm a NoNoWriMo person...

I'm writing beginning to end...there are a couple of times I've cut something short...I haven't left any written note, but it's definitely in my mind that I want to finish/insert in the editing process.

The one thing that's clearer to me this year is that this effort won't end up on November 30th as something I'll be proud to pass around. There will be a whole pile of editing to do if I get finished, because there are chunks that need to be deleted, things that need to be fleshed out or re-arranged...

Maybe the way I'd describe it is I'm writing linearly from now until the end of the month, but there's some jumping back that will probably happen post-first-draft.

But, who knows, I've never yet been successful (or even close to finishing), so who knows?

[kyleri]

I'm doing NaNoWriMo too, and I'm writing linearly though I've done enough of an outline that I probably could jump around if I wanted to.

With any luck (okay, with a lot of luck and a lot more work) I'll be able to tell you in a few years that my style works for getting published. I _do_ know that it's working to get the book written - I'm over 30,000 words already. I _think_ I'm going to produce something that I'll be able to knock into shape with a bunch more work, but right now I'm far too close to it to have any real idea if I'm right. :/

[geekosaur]

Every so often writers (most of the ones I've seen are SF authors, but I'm sure other genres are represented) talk about what it takes to write against deadlines like this --- only one I can think of off the top of my head is Niven, about writing a story on demand at a con. It's rather different from normal writing.

(I'm currently recalling someone's short story about a writing contest vaguely like NaNoWriMo but converted to a spectator sport --- Google is failing to find it for me, though. In particular I'm recalling one point where many of the spectators are cheering for "their" contestant: "Culp, Culp, Crank That Pulp!")

Or Harlan's window story.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

If I do write an outline, I don't dare show it to anyone (my mother shredded one about 30 years ago and the scars are still too deep).

It's coming to me in chunks. I waited after the last chunk for the next act to hit my head, which it did (of course) in the middle of writing my final report for an audit I'm doing. I've been trying to not let it escape until I get it written down.

Today I wrote 1000 words, still holding the rest of the chunk in my head, because Duncan needed the computer for an essay. Tonight I plan to sit down and let it flow if possible.

I have real trouble with straight-line plots, and the sub-plots drive me crazy. So I just chunk it out until the characters are done with this part. Mostly, it's like watching what my friends unroll in my head -- the characters do what they're going to do. (For example, I didn't realize one character was going to show up in this current section until she started talking.)

Is that too stupid to say?

[ohiblather.livejournal.com]

In my experienced, I've found that published fiction writers vary widely in their approach. Some outline in great detail before they start to write. Others only have the vaguest notion of what they want to write about, hate the idea of outlining in detail. Both methods seem to work.

I find I need some kind of outline, but don't like too much detail. I do like detailed character and background outlines, though.

I found Nanowrimo useful in forcing myself to get over my tendency to over-edit as I go. Also showed me that I COULD produce more words per day than I thought I was able to. Overall, I'm glad I did Nano, but would probably not do it too often unless I needed that kick in the pants again.

I'm currently editing the Nano novel I wrote a couple years ago for submission to my agent. I like the story a lot, but it was in REALLY rough shape and the edit turned out to be more of a rewrite.

[amergina.livejournal.com]

With me, it was a combo of both. I usually had a pretty god idea of a starting point and an ending point, but I didn't always write liniarly. Often, I would write the pivotal stuff first, then sit down and figure out how the characters got to that point from something that happened earlier. Sometimes scenes got shifted about, then connecting bits were written.

...

I miss creative writing. I would have done NaNoWriMo if it hadn't been for that whole "closing on a house" thing that is EATING MY NOVEMBER LIKE A MONSTER FROM HELL.

Er yeah. Not stressed. Not yet. Nope.

NaNoWriMo and Me.

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

(Thank dmnsqrl for my ending up in your pages)

Bugger that. I write every day, and I do novel material, but I don’t sit down and say that this month I’ll be writing a novel. Or part of a novel. I typically have five or six project on the burners at any point, but I do not write fiction to a deadline. The distinction I make is that research papers, technical manuals, stuff like that are generally deadline driven, generally dull as dry sausage, and can be made effective and interesting by process. Creative stuff, in order to be creative, has to be done in a setting without the same degree of organization.

Now, this may only be true for me, and even I will make exceptions. If someone has something they want me to write, and it’s something I’d normally do for fun, I’ll accept a deadline on it – from the three minute poem drill to the short story day drill. Trick is, it has to be done in a sitting – if I get up and come back to something half an hour later, odds are I’ve no longer got that particular writing mode going.

Regarding the beginning to end stuff – generally, yes. If it’s a poem, I find that I don’t even come back for an editing pass. I tend to think that a poem falls as it will, and that fiddling with it after it falls is cheating. Yeah, I also think I might be crazy, but when I was starting out, any time I tried to edit a poem, I messed it up worse. Finally decided that I'd never edit another poem - if the poem wasn’t good, I’d post it publicly somewhere for ridicule and get on with my life. Since that point, I’ve written three – out of more than 1000 poems – that I’ve had to post by those rules. The no net rule forces me to focus.

In technical writing, I go from an outline, and back and fill like crazy. I generally have five or six documents open at a go, a physical layout beside me with a pencil, and research material open on a second computer. I can make tech writing easy to understand and interesting by doing it that way – but not fiction.

For longer fiction, I tend to write a chapter in a sitting, but go back and close edit it after the fact – generally with a week’s lag between the write and the first edit, and then another week before the second edit. As such, each chapter has the same mind behind it, but doesn’t suffer from either the intensity of a poem, and I can cull stuff afterwards. I never back edit while writing, and I always make myself wait – otherwise, I’ll look at something and get frustrated. I feel no embarassment about going back and reading my own work for pleasure, either - even if I'm close editing. When I write for fun, I'm writing for me - and I generally like what I come up with, even when it needs fixing.

In anything I write, I generally have a back-world going. I run role-playing games for people a lot, and it’s similar to the idea of just having characters living against whatever happens, sticking their noses any which-old-where, and trying to live as best they can. The world does whatever the world does, running in my head, and the characters interact with it from there. The closest I come to writing out of order is memories, not in a flashback style, but as, “I remember,” where the character in question contrasts memory with something.

I’m told it’s nuts to write without an outline, but I find stories tend to write themselves, and while I might get bored one day and do up a prospectus type outline, I don’t hold myself to it even a little bit. The story goes wherever it wants, an takes as long as it takes to get done.

That said, I’ve done the official drill of 100k words by outline. It was readable, interesting, and almost painfully similar to a tech manual; never again.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"Do you write your story linearly from beginning to end (not counting editing passes)? Or do you jump around, leaving place-holders for things you'll fill in later?"

Yes. First of all, I'm not a published writer (poems don't count in this particular instance) so my methods may be irrelevant. My short stories seem to come pretty much linearly. My two attempts at novels (both of which I may finish after I'm out of grad school), however took both tracks. The first was outlined from beginning to end, who met who, who did what spelled out in each chapter. The second.... is actually developing from a short story. I wrote a short story, a member of my writing group convinced me that it's a chapter from a fantasy novel and HE wrote the outline for the novel for me. Since then, I've written three additional chapters using those same characters. So, where do they fit in, in the outline? Simple, they don't! :D After a few more chapters, I'm going to write a new outline to see what I need to do to string them all together.

[laurabee.livejournal.com]

It's funny you mention it, because I've noticed a difference in how I write NaNo this year, and I'm getting a lot further this year. Before, I would jump around and write the interesting parts first. Then I would never go back and write the boring, but important to the plot, parts. This year, I'm just driving headlong through, writing through the boring parts as I come to them, and I'm the furthest along I've ever been on a NaNo story. The downside to this, especially if I get interrupted mid-way through a scene, is that I've lost the "feel" for the scene and it may turn out that there are noticable transitions in tone. I think that's just a writing discipline thing, separating how I feel from how the characters feel. Also, I'm refusing to edit this year, which helps, but I do have an outline in a separate document that says what next few major plot points are and what the characters' names are as I am so bad with names.

I think NaNo is about getting your words down on paper. I seriously considered being a novelist in high school and subscribed to Writer's Digest magazine and wrote a lot. Many of the articles I read said that getting in the habit of writing, and writing without too much inline editing, was the best way to become better at writing. Practice makes perfect and all that nonesense. I can't say I saw improvement in my writing from Jr. High to High School, but I was 14 years old, what did I know? What I find frustrating is reading an author I like, but they have some stylistic quirk I can't stand, and then finding myself doing it.

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I'm probably a non-sequiteur here, but for reference:

I always write in a highly free-associative way, but I'm mainly focused on writing LARPs. My serious writing is generally in 1-15 page chunks which are massively interconnected, often with the same event told from multiple viewpoints. So I'll generally build everything holistically, doing the actual writing only after doing massive outlining. (And even when I'm doing the writing, often flipping around and rewriting six other pages while I'm working on this one.)

I'm pretty sure that, if I tried to write something linear, I'd still wind up doing much this sort of process. Closest I've come was a play that is just barely started but outlined at a pretty detailed level by now, which had just this sort of design phase first.

This is, of course, why I decided to build a customized Wiki environment for myself -- it's the only reasonable way to keep track of what I'm doing...