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

[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.