How linear should I be in writing my story?
This my most serious writing endeavor ever. I've gotten much farther than I've dreamed of getting. So far, I've been chugging along writing everything in the order that I imagine it being written in the final few drafts. But lately, I've discovered that the more I write, the more my story evolves. It goes both forward and backwards in my story's timeline.
Example:
I "figured out" that the characters thrown together don't seem to trust each other as much as I originally thought they did. I decided that it wasn't plausible to for these reasonably intelligent people who were justifiably suspicious of outsiders would just team up and follow my MC because she seemed nice. So now, they are suspicious of her and have their own reasons for going along with her plans.
Now I want to go back and add I things to what I've already written. Things that seemed like background fluff now are filled with mystery and possibilities. So I've been going back and adding sheets. Thank goodness for Ulysses because otherwise I'd never attempt to do the sort of surgery I'm doing to what I've already written.
But now things are getting tangled up. As soon as I go back and add something, I think about things that need to happen in the future. Sometimes it's where I left off and that's easy, but sometimes it's something that happens near the end. Then I start worrying that if I keep jumping around back and forth through my first draft that I'll just end up going around in circles. The trust example is only one change. Several other little wrinkles keep popping up. I now refuse to delete or rewrite any sheets, because sometimes I drop an idea and a scene I deemed obsolete is back in business as the "canon" storyline.
Anyway, should I just plow forward without ever going back and forth? Or is it ok to jump around and change things. I'm not taking about editing. I'm talking about changing the story itself. I'm starting to worry that while I'm writing triple my word count goal on a daily basis, perhaps I'm not making any real progress and I'm just spinning my wheels and thinking too much. But I can't stop myself from playing with the plot because the more I play with it, the more I want to explore possibilities and I end up writing virtual reams of content. If I force myself to plod along with the order the story will be written, I feel resentful and edgy because I'm not writing one of the "good parts" that is currently on my mind. Then writing feels more like cleaning the kitchen floor and I want to put it off.
So help! Am I dooming my efforts by thinking of allowing myself to go off the leash and write any thing I want in any order I feel like? Or should I discipline myself and write in a straight line as much as possible? Which approach is more likely to lead to a successful story?
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2 answers
If you are a discovery writer, this is part of your process. Just get it all on the page and keep writing; you'll finish when you finish. However, it is then part of the first draft that you must go back and sort it out from beginning to end and make sure it's a coherent whole.
Writing "the good parts" is fun and keeps you motivated. As long as you accept the idea that at some point you have to return and stitch all the good parts together into a workable story — and that you may have to kill your darlings in order to make your story work — go ahead and write what you like. I am a big fan of keeping excised good bits in a slush file so they can be added back in at some other point if it's appropriate.
If you are more of a plotter, it may be that you haven't outlined thoroughly enough. Maybe you need to work on a more detailed, scene-by-scene outline or breakdown, which would allow you to explore all your new plot bunnies in prècis form without writing them out in detail.
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Like many answers in life: it depends.
I'm not sure how Ulysses works, but I imagine it can splice/paste ideas, keep virtual notecards, and whatnot
Some writers draw out long outlines and try to roughly stick with them while others rely on stream-of-consciousness storytelling, at least for the first draft. It is also OK to do something in between.
Although it is fruitful to get all of your ideas on paper, you don't want to lose sight of the ultimate goal of finishing your book. Thus, you must show some discipline for forward progress. It is far easier to go back and tie up loose ends and worry about plot changes after your first draft is complete.
Are you spinning your wheels? Yes. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. Scene management is a necessary part of the editing process; it's just very inefficient the way you're doing it.
For myself, I wind up with an "extra draft" because my first run-through looks psychotic or thereabouts. The sentence structure is awful, many of the ideas are inane, and I dead end characters and sequences. But my imagination pushes me forward and subsequent iterations make my story look more coherent. After a complete draft, you can go through your notecards and see what fits.
In the end, subplots come together after a succession of multiple drafts, not multiple scene rewrites. If you write a complete story first before backtracking (too much), your best scenes and ideas will survive leaving the others behind.
Good luck!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20462. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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