In this video, I explore whether you should write your story linearly from start to finish, or whether it’s okay to embrace spontaneous bursts of inspiration when scenes emerge out of sequence.
You’ll learn how I use my XXX placeholder method (previously talked about here: • Enhance Your Writing with the ‘XXX’ T… ) to flag future scenes without losing momentum in my current chapter, why I sometimes draft pivotal moments immediately while the concept is still fresh and vivid in my mind, and two approaches to doing so.
Hello, Jane Cleland here. Do you write consecutively, or do you ever write scenes out of order?
I tend to write consecutively, but keep in mind, every one of us has to develop his or her own writing process, and there’s no one best way to do it. What we want to do is find an approach that allows us to write our best quality work most efficiently. So, for me, that tends to be consecutive. But if you have an idea for something that should happen later, I say go for it. Why not? You just need to make a note to yourself so you don’t forget you’ve written it.
And I’ll tell you how I might approach that. Here I am on, say, page 18, and now I have this really clear vision of something that should happen on page 80. And I’m saying these 10-page chapters—I’m thinking somewhere about page 80. That would be maybe my first twist, and that’s the scene that I think I want to get on paper.
So I might approach it in one of two ways. I might leave myself notes—so I’m telling as opposed to showing—and then when I reach that point in the story, I can write it out at that minute in a showing way. I can bring it to life and make it action-oriented. That’s probably what I would do.
But there’s nothing wrong with writing it as an actual showing scene and just saying, “This should come about here,” or “This should come following that,” or “Before the other thing,” so that you know where to place it. And I would leave it in my ongoing manuscript.
I would use my triple-X method—XXX—and that way, you know you can do a search for XXX (which doesn’t appear in English), and you’ll always come to things that need attention, need placement, or need further work. In this case, it’s about placement.
I think it’s an interesting idea, and I encourage you to experiment with it. Have you ever done anything like that? Does it work for you? Put it in the comments section—I read them all! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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