The Brilliant Joy of Writing Out of Order

The most fun I've had writing, I wrote out of order. I'd think about a scene, get really excited about it, and when I sat down to write it, the words flow, like pouring coffee into a text document. A scene with lavish imagery. A neat bit of introspection. The big reveal! The first kiss! A single line of dialogue that's going to be hilarious. I write what I'm excited about writing, and then the writing is fun. I get the idea out of my head and onto paper before it slips away or loses itself in the mess of scenes that have gone stale in my head.

Now, this means that my most recent project, as fresh and new as it is, is as much of a mess as you can make in an Open Office file. Let's take a look at what I have:

• A two line synopsis. I like the punchline, but the setup needs some ironing before it really works. Why did I write a two line synopsis? Beats me!
• The first chapter, which is in decent shape and a decent length. I could end it where it is, but I think I can add a section about curly fries, and if you ever have the opportunity to add a section about curly fries, you should.
• Four blank lines, the phrase “fight with knives?” and three more blank lines. This is kinda funny, because I think there's going to be a whole other chapter before the fight scene, but I didn't bother leaving myself a note for that. Also, four cartridge returns seems a bit excessive.
• Three lines of ominous forewarning that the twist is coming, followed by a joke.
• Followed by The Twist. These two pages will probably have a chapter break in the middle because it's all “dun dun DUN!” and then abruptly changes tone.
• Seven pages of dialogue from the next dozen or so scenes in no particular order.
• An unordered, unannotated list of nicknames that I came up with while driving. These nicknames are various levels of appropriate, and I'm not sure who I was describing or who was saying the name “Peach Pit.”
• Descriptions of people standing or sitting too close to each other.

So, of course, this process involves a lot of going back over what I've already written to find out where the next scene I want to write fits. But I don't think of this like a bad thing, because each time I read through a section, I can clean it up and make it sharper or leave myself a note that it's not really doing what I want it to do. (Kind of going back to this post.) And, yeah, this goes against the idea to just vomit out everything until it's all there, but I've decided that method doesn't work for me completely and I need to do some revisions just to keep myself sane and keep myself excited about what I've written.

When I was writing Immortal Queen, I did this thing called “prompt bingo” where I would make myself a bingo card filled with one word, random prompts and when one of them spoke to me, I'd write that scene, cross off the box, and eventually get five crossed off boxes in a row and get a bingo and feel accomplished. Eventually, I had a file full of scenes that were roughly in order without transitions, and together I could see the structure of the story.

Of course, then I had to go back and string them together with things like transitions (ick), but I find that if I actually get to the point in a project where it's time to insert these transitions, I'm A. so close to having something ready to go that I don't mind writing them anymore, and B. in a place where I can figure out how to arrange the structure to not write the boring parts. (Because if it's boring to write, it's boring to read, so don't write boring things.)

I've got a few friends who prefer to write in order, and they have really decent reasons for doing so. One is that if you write in order, the narrative can surprise them. It's like driving down a road in the dark with just your headlights to guide you. You can only see so far ahead. But that doesn't work for me because I usually start a story with the climax in mind, and I really want to get to that point. If I start at the beginning and work my way to the climax, that removes the point of letting the narrative surprise me, it can sometimes take a bit of narrative acrobatics and questionable character intentions to get to the scene I have in mind, and I have to wade through boring bits I don't care about in order to get to the thing I really want to write. I lose steam, and then the project dies.

The other good reason I've heard to write in order is that that way the characters grow naturally. Their evolution feels organic. But I generally have a character arc in mind and I'm pretty good at pinpointing where each scene is in an arc (because this is a talent I have, and you bet I'm going to brag about it). Aside from that, once I have a bunch of scenes in order, I can iron out the character arc and fix anything that's out of place. I can make adjustments, and those are fun adjustments to make. (So maybe this isn't really a skill I have, and I'm just pretending it's a skill, but actually a result of hundreds of hours of editing so you'll think I'm naturally talented and then be impressed with me. Have I impressed you? Haha, don't answer that. Of course I have.)