I don’t think I’ve ever written a story of any length, with only a couple of exceptions (and those have qualifiers), in a linear form. My thoughts jump all over the place, always have.
My usual idea for a story begins with me getting a vision somewhat resembling a scene from a movie trailer - a scene that hints at the whole but is presented out of context.
I make my best effort from that point on to at least start at the beginning, but from then on I frequently jump all over the place until I manage to come up with a rough draft. My two exceptions: One was a story in which I wrote the last scene first, then worked my way linearly backwards to the beginning.
The other exception was what was intended to be a PWP take on that old trope, “James Kirk as a prostitute”. Everything went quite well, up until the point Kirk turned right instead of left and started walking down a dark alley, and when I saw what he was doing I realized I was actually writing “James Kirk is a rebel against an Evil Empire”. (Basically, what if Kirk was raised in a dystopia a la Blake’s 7.) That’s also when I realized I had a novel on my hands.
During the course of a six hour drive to San Francisco and then the six hour drive back to Los Angeles, a friend and I discussed the plot and together we plotted out the entire story. I followed that outline and was actually able to complete it by going from A-Z instead of my usual habit of starting at G or M and bouncing all over the place.
Jumping around in the plot generally works out well. I know that somewhere in my subconscious the whole story is lurking and key information generally makes itself known to me when I need to move to the next step. Fitting it all together can be a chore because I tend to avoid writing the “boring in-between scenes” until the end. Sex scenes, too; I frequently put in a line of “sex scene goes here”.
I compare the way I start writing a story to seeing an iceberg. The top part is already there, but 9/10ths of it are still hidden. Or, as some sculptors say, they know there is a statue inside that block of marble, they just have to carve it out. My stories feel like that - I might find an “arm” or a “foot” while carving out my story but most of the time I eventually find the whole piece.
Thanks for explaining your writing style. I love discussing writing styles - there are so many different techniques people use. Linear writing is one of the most popular; I’d say most writers I’ve discussed this subject with use your technique, some with an outline, some without.
You said: >>>Writing linearly, if a character decides to go right at a road junction instead of left, it's easy to change the route - and I don't have to get back somehow to something already written that's well off the road my characters are now on.
The only time I had a real problem with a character changing the course of a story was four years ago. It didn’t really impact the “concept” of the story or any of the scenes I had already written, pre- and post- the scene in question. But it changed the entire point of the story, from what was basically going to be a simple escape story, to one dealing with the long term consequences of domestic violence writ large.
It took me four years to complete - though part of that was because of a massive amount of real life issues that kept me from working on it for the better part of two years. An equal part, though, was I had to entirely reconceive the back story of one major character, and how that change in her impacted the two main characters. Fortunately, even though the diverging point happened relatively early in the story, I did not have to change the trajectory of the story - my ending stayed exactly the same, however I had to write considerably more to get to that point.
I suspect one of the reasons I write linearly is to avoid being left with having to finish by writing the 'boring in-between scenes'. And sex scenes? I write totally gen now. I never did write good sex scenes, and I knew it.
*During the course of a six hour drive to San Francisco and then the six hour drive back to Los Angeles, a friend and I discussed the plot and together we plotted out the entire story.*
:-) Many years ago, my friend Valerie and I spent an evening plotting out a story. We had it fully detailed, but we didn't write anything down. Next morning, neither of us could remember anything - anything at all - about it, apart from the basic idea that had triggered it; Kirk beamed up, stepped off the transporter, and said something totally out of character. We couldn't even remember what he said.
One of the things one can't help noticing in a TV series is plot holes, though that isn't necessarily the fault of the scriptwriter. A scene could have been delated during filming or subsequent editing, to allow for time restrictions including the insertion of special effects. Those plot holes can give a fan writer a lot of scope!
But fan readers are very unforgiving of a plot hole in fanfic where they'll ignore it in a filmed episode.
And I also remember once, in the days before I found fandom... I was writing even then, but it was all original fiction. I was still, as I remember, in my early teens. I was trying to write something on the lines of a locked door mystery, and totally wrote myself into a corner. I either changed one of the parameters of the story or abandoned it. I wrote it off as a learning experience and abandoned it, because changing anything would have killed the entire point of the story. (A group had gone into a cave with only one entrance, and a rockfall blocked that entrance. The story was from the POV of the rescuers, and when they dug through the rockfall... the cave was empty. But there was no way out... and I didn't want to re-dig the cave to give another exit... and in any case if they'd got out there wasn't going to be the need for the rescue attempt...)
My usual idea for a story begins with me getting a vision somewhat resembling a scene from a movie trailer - a scene that hints at the whole but is presented out of context.
I make my best effort from that point on to at least start at the beginning, but from then on I frequently jump all over the place until I manage to come up with a rough draft. My two exceptions: One was a story in which I wrote the last scene first, then worked my way linearly backwards to the beginning.
The other exception was what was intended to be a PWP take on that old trope, “James Kirk as a prostitute”. Everything went quite well, up until the point Kirk turned right instead of left and started walking down a dark alley, and when I saw what he was doing I realized I was actually writing “James Kirk is a rebel against an Evil Empire”. (Basically, what if Kirk was raised in a dystopia a la Blake’s 7.) That’s also when I realized I had a novel on my hands.
During the course of a six hour drive to San Francisco and then the six hour drive back to Los Angeles, a friend and I discussed the plot and together we plotted out the entire story. I followed that outline and was actually able to complete it by going from A-Z instead of my usual habit of starting at G or M and bouncing all over the place.
Jumping around in the plot generally works out well. I know that somewhere in my subconscious the whole story is lurking and key information generally makes itself known to me when I need to move to the next step. Fitting it all together can be a chore because I tend to avoid writing the “boring in-between scenes” until the end. Sex scenes, too; I frequently put in a line of “sex scene goes here”.
I compare the way I start writing a story to seeing an iceberg. The top part is already there, but 9/10ths of it are still hidden. Or, as some sculptors say, they know there is a statue inside that block of marble, they just have to carve it out. My stories feel like that - I might find an “arm” or a “foot” while carving out my story but most of the time I eventually find the whole piece.
Thanks for explaining your writing style. I love discussing writing styles - there are so many different techniques people use. Linear writing is one of the most popular; I’d say most writers I’ve discussed this subject with use your technique, some with an outline, some without.
You said:
>>>Writing linearly, if a character decides to go right at a road junction instead of left, it's easy to change the route - and I don't have to get back somehow to something already written that's well off the road my characters are now on.
The only time I had a real problem with a character changing the course of a story was four years ago. It didn’t really impact the “concept” of the story or any of the scenes I had already written, pre- and post- the scene in question. But it changed the entire point of the story, from what was basically going to be a simple escape story, to one dealing with the long term consequences of domestic violence writ large.
It took me four years to complete - though part of that was because of a massive amount of real life issues that kept me from working on it for the better part of two years. An equal part, though, was I had to entirely reconceive the back story of one major character, and how that change in her impacted the two main characters. Fortunately, even though the diverging point happened relatively early in the story, I did not have to change the trajectory of the story - my ending stayed exactly the same, however I had to write considerably more to get to that point.
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*During the course of a six hour drive to San Francisco and then the six hour drive back to Los Angeles, a friend and I discussed the plot and together we plotted out the entire story.*
:-) Many years ago, my friend Valerie and I spent an evening plotting out a story. We had it fully detailed, but we didn't write anything down. Next morning, neither of us could remember anything - anything at all - about it, apart from the basic idea that had triggered it; Kirk beamed up, stepped off the transporter, and said something totally out of character. We couldn't even remember what he said.
One of the things one can't help noticing in a TV series is plot holes, though that isn't necessarily the fault of the scriptwriter. A scene could have been delated during filming or subsequent editing, to allow for time restrictions including the insertion of special effects. Those plot holes can give a fan writer a lot of scope!
But fan readers are very unforgiving of a plot hole in fanfic where they'll ignore it in a filmed episode.
And I also remember once, in the days before I found fandom... I was writing even then, but it was all original fiction. I was still, as I remember, in my early teens. I was trying to write something on the lines of a locked door mystery, and totally wrote myself into a corner. I either changed one of the parameters of the story or abandoned it. I wrote it off as a learning experience and abandoned it, because changing anything would have killed the entire point of the story. (A group had gone into a cave with only one entrance, and a rockfall blocked that entrance. The story was from the POV of the rescuers, and when they dug through the rockfall... the cave was empty. But there was no way out... and I didn't want to re-dig the cave to give another exit... and in any case if they'd got out there wasn't going to be the need for the rescue attempt...)
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