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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24914
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Agree completely with MissMonicaE. I would say so in a comment, but I have no reputation and so forth as this is my first post on a StackExchange site. In fact, I created an account specifically to comment on MissMonicaE's answer, but it turns out that I am forced to post an answer myself.

**My personal experience:** I had a story idea in my head for twenty-five years that I had started to write over a dozen times, and never got past the first chapter. Every time, I blew my creative load stressing about writing this part so I can write the next part. Every time, I got frustrated or lost interest, and walked away.

What finally worked was to write everything I knew about the story, separated by chapter breaks. Then I went back and wrote transitions--I don't like the word "filler" because there shouldn't be any; all of the words in your story should contribute to the story or character development. In some cases, I had to change things I had already written, but I suspect I would have had to do that anyway. In fact, my "final battle" ultimately became an epic failure and major setback to my characters, requiring more story and a new "final battle". The last 30% of my novel was unplanned, and I got two more major characters out of the endeavor, as well as the realization that a minor character wasn't so minor after all. To me, it's better to have to be creative to connect the parts that I know than it is to try to remember the parts that I know while I'm struggling to find a way to transition between them. I had great ideas about events and dialogue for later, when my characters were on an island facing off against a group of sirens, but they were still in the desert and I had no idea how they were even going to get to the island yet. I would have lost a good bit of the cool stuff if I hadn't jumped ahead to write it while I had it.

I have no doubt that if I had tried to write it in order, this last effort would have just been the _nth_ time I tried to write that novel I always wanted to write. Doing it this way yielded a complete novel, and about 70% of the next one in the series. In the second one, I started by writing 12 chapters in the middle, the first chapter, then several chapters in between, a later chapter, and then some more at the beginning. I've almost got it all connected up, and it's working out fine for me.

In the end though, it's what works for you. Try it and see.

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