Young Writers Society

I have a question for all you novel writers out there: How do you write?

I am in the process of writing two novels, and the first I began chronologically. I began with chapter one and made my way through the book. This I found extremely difficult, and I am actually rewriting it.

The second I began by fleshing it out A LOT, and eventually began to write scenes, where I would write the climax by itself, or another scene that I didn't know where it would go in the book, but I wrote it anyway. And then later, I went back and put them in the order I wanted and began to patch them together. This worked much better for me, and now I am almost to the editing stage.

Are there any other ways that you guys write novels? Or do you write with one of these? What works for you?

I must say I haven't tried the latter, I generally tend to write chronologically. However, when I do write I rarely have the whole plot organised, which is why I have stopped the actual writing for the moment in order to concentrate on outlining.

I always write scenes in order, and the first draft is always dreadful. But then I write a second draft, and take the elements I like from the first, and add them in. It seems to work better that way for me.

Goldie

Ok, I shall forewarn everyone that this will probably be rather long winded and I'll also probably ramble a lot... so brace yourselves, or of course you could just skip this whole post !LOL!

When I first began writing consiously, meaning that I had actually considered that wriing might be something that, if worked on, could develop into more than a hobby, I wrote scenes and then attempted to stick them together later. This did not work for a number of reasons:
1 - I was constantly changing the plot as the characters took on lives of their own, and so many scenes that I had worked sooo hard on were no longer relevant.
2 - I often lost scenes in my hardrive, or they were merely forgotten.
3 - It just added confusion and unecessairy effort because piecing them together was by no means as effective as I had thought.

Next I tried to force myself to write cronologically, that did not work either. I was always thinking of things that I wanted to write and my procratination level shot through the roof because I was not always writing what I really wanted to work on.

Thus, I came up with the method I now use religiously with everything that I write.
I write the story cronologicaly on the computer, and I keep a seperate notebook for each seperate project (just small ones from the dollar store for short stories, but seperate notebooks nonetheless!). In these notebooks I can outline scenes, I can jot down random sentences, but I do not allow myself to write whole scenes...that way when I get to that part of the story I can adjust the scene to the path the story has taken without feeling like I am killing a part of myself because I am not too atached to the under developped chunk of the story.

To further organize myself (yes, I am a little compulsive about my organization, if you knew me better you would know that for me it is necessairy...) I divide the notebook into about five sections so that the random scenes are written in as chronological a way as possible.

All right, I think that's it. I hope I didn't give anyone a headache
really interresting topic by the way...

-Gen

That sounds like a really good way to do it, s_p. I'll tell you why I find writing chronologically didn't work for me:

You're right, I was never working on what I wanted to work on, and it frustrated me.

I have to know exactly where I'm going to begin writing. I might change a few things on the way, but for the most part, I know what the climax is going to be, who's going to die in the process, and how the hero will save the day. Therefore, I can write scenes fairly confidently, knowing I will most likely use them.

Lastly, I find that in my writing, especially novels, I have too many small things. I tend to have a lot of foreshadowing and hidden meanings, and I don't think about it when I'm going from chapter to chapter.

I find that it's much easier, for me, if at the beginning I write out everything I want to be in my book. If there's an important relationship established between two characters, then I'll write down how and relatively when I want it done. When I have all the scenes I want, I open one word document. I title each scene as its seen on the list I've made, and write. I put a page break between each scene, so they don't run together. When I have all the scenes written out, I take out index cards. On each card, I write a scene. Then, I sit down at a table and put the index cards in order of how I want them. Next I call the "stitching." I put the scenes together, writing in between to make them fit. This is the significance of titling each scene exactly as they were on the list: I can do a "Control + F" to find the scenes I want, and copy and paste them. Then, obviously, I move on to editing. I find this works much better for me, because it breaks down what would normally a very large and daunting task into many small steps.

By the way, I also keep notebooks for each of my stories, but I use them to write in class when I'm not paying attention , and copy them into the computer later. I, too, find it very helpful.