Winding road (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On the weekend, I had an email from a writing buddy. One of a number of people I met on another website under another name, she is part of a small group who have decided to hold their own writing contest. The idea is to write as many chapters as possible, in the month from 7 May to 7 June. No new projects, just WIPs, are eligible, as the idea is to get a move on with things we have already started. Each participant would offer some kind of prize to the winner, and encouragement of fellow competitors is mandatory. Would I, she asked, be interested?
Would I what! With the school holidays recently I’ve dropped back my writing output of late, though that was remedied a little by the rush of inspiration (and frantic scribbling) I had last week. The only trouble was, I wasn’t sure I would be able to meet their criteria. The thing is, you see, that I don’t write in chapters.
Actually, I don’t write in order at all. Well, sure, for short stories (up to 7000 or so words) I do, but anything longer than that I’m all over the shop. I write scenes as they occur to me, then put them in order for the story I have vaguely in the back of my mind, and then fill in the blanks. Sure, this means that a lot of what I write eventually gets scrapped, as many scenes either turn out differently than I originally envisioned them, or end up not being included at all, but it’s the way my mind words. Key events first, filler later.
The result of this is that I usually have to write the whole novel, and then split it into chapters. There are some natural chapter breaks, of course, but if I want any consistency of chapter length then I occasionally have to move scenes around in order to get them at the end of the chapter. (And I like consistent chapter lengths. One of my foibles, I think.)
I know that I’m not alone in this – I’m told that Stephen King, no less, writes in much the same way – but I also know that there are a lot of writers who start at the beginning and go right through to the end. To me, this is a completely alien way of writing, but I can’t help but admire it. I know that some of these people are “pantsers”, who don’t know where their story will end up until they get there, but others have planned so meticulously that they can tell you exactly what will happen in any given chapter, and could even write it if you asked them to, even if they’re nowhere near that in the story as yet. The sheer weight of planning involved in that makes my head spin.
I’ve told myself that one day, I’ll try to write a story that way. I’ll fill notebooks not with actual scenes, but notes about scenes, what they’ll involve, with meticulous details about story order. I’m not sure that I’ll do a very good job at it, but I want to see what it’s like.
In the meantime, though, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. It’s worked for me so far, and it’s the way I feel most comfortable as a writer. And the writing competition my friend suggested? Well, I’ve come up with a compromise. I’ll nominate a set number of words per chapter – say 2500 – and I’ll write as many blocks of 2500 words as I can. It’s better than nothing, right?
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I don’t worry vastly about where the Chapter breaks fall initially. I’ve heard that there’s little point in the writer doing that, since it’s one of the main things that editors love to tinker with.
Well, yes and no. To me, there are some really obvious chapter breaks – cliffhangers, that type of thing – that I doubt many editors would change. For normal chapter endings, though, yes, I agree with you. All I can do is put it how I think it feels right and then pass it on,and if an editor thinks I need to move them, then they’ll be moved.
I mostly like to write in order, except if I struggle with the end of a chapter I just go “meh, whatever, I’ll come back to it later”, so my WIP is full of holes. Also, I love writing action scenes the most so sometimes I jump ahead to write these… just for the fun. …that said, I read my last chapter yesterday and it SHOULD have been an action scene, … I was SO bored – not a good sign.
See, I could never do that. While I often write early scenes early, to get the opening of my story out of the way, I almost always start with the main turning points and the ending before I go back and fill in some of the holes. Actually, usually I write those scenes before I have a plot, then work out if a story can be made from them. (Sometimes, unfortunately, the answer is no.) It’s all a learning process, though, and we all do things differently, don’t we? Part of the beauty of writing, I think.
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Sounds like I’m your polar opposite in this. I start writing page 1, go through chronologically, and then finish on the last page. It never really occurred to write any other way. I guess I see myself naturally as more of a story-teller.
If you are considering trying an outlined project some day, I would suggest that you use a good outlining tool. The way I start a project is to plan out every scene in the book with a 1 sentence description. I place those scenes into chapters, and then I will go in and start filling in the actual content of the scenes. I don’t find this onerous. This is an extremely creative task. This is where the story actually gets crafted. After that you’re just fleshing it out.
Now here’s the interesting twist. Once you have that outline in place, you can actually go and write at any point within the story. You don’t necessarily have to be chronological because you already know how the scenes will fit together.
Anyway, it’s important to write in a way that works for you, which is what you seem to have found. I would just share some advice from Larry Brook’s book Story Engineering. If you want to be a pantser and write in that free-form kind of way, they’s fine. Just make sure that you at least know three things beforehand: Your first plot point (at the 25% of the book, your mid-point, and your second plot-point which happens at 75%).
I admire you, really I do. And I want to try it your way one day. I’m just not sure how well all that planning would work for me. I remember hearing from a fellow writer who approached things the way you do, when she complained that she’d written the chapter after the one she’d intended to. To me, that feels completely alien.
Not that I’m a pantser, though – I have my plot all set out in dot points, and know exactly what happens in what order (well, the main things anyway). I have a good idea of how the story goes, I just write the key scenes first and then fill in around them. As I said, it works for me,and that’s the most important thing, right?
Yep. Exactly right. I don’t think anybody could do their best work using a method that is alien to them.
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