I’ve just completed writing a novel I wrote out of order.
I’m not alone in realizing you don’t have to write a story in a linear fashion.
Writer J. K. Rowling famously wrote her entire Harry Potter series toward one conclusion: a chapter she wrote at the beginning of her career and kept locked in a safe deposit box.
Five reasons why it can be helpful to write out of order:
1. If like Rowling you’ve written the ending first, you know exactly what you’re writing to achieve.
I got bored (bad sign!) with the novel I wrote and dreaded what was up next (death). So, I granted myself permission to take the day off from straight forwarding writing and I wrote the last three chapters instead.
That re-inspired me, gave me the ending, and helped me “salt” other things into the manuscript I might not have seen before.
2. It breaks up writer’s block.
Like the above, some days you just don’t feel like writing a particular scene or you can’t imagine what needs to happen next. The last 20% of my book, 14 chapters, was written in the following order:
Chapters 47-48, 50, 49
Chapters 37-41
Chapters 42-44
Chapter 47
Chapter 45
3. Giving yourself permission to write out of order enables you to work out whatever chapter comes to mind while you’re walking the dog.
When the boys in the basement get busy, they don’t necessarily pay attention to your outline. They know the basic scope, of course, but they’re trying on different ideas to fit what you’re writing.
If you give yourself permission to write whatever they turn up (usually because something you’ve seen or done inspired them), creativity can flow easily.
4. You don’t have to keep renewing the reference books from the library, much less pay overdue fines.
I waited a long time to get a copy of General John J. Pershing‘s memoirs of World War I. I flipped through it and wrote the chapters in which he appeared–so I could return the book.
I did the same thing with The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Indeed, I hadn’t planned to write an entire chapter on the Spanish Flu (much less a blog post you can read here), but when I read the book, I was so taken with the subject, it turned up four different times in my novel.
By writing that chapter, I could “set up” things prior to its appearance in the story (Chapter 49 of the ending)
5. You can be pleasantly surprised when you get to the end of your novel and discover how much you’ve actually already written!
My desk at the end
I’d forgotten how much of the ending I’d written and was watching the word count nervously.
Such a delight to realize I’d already finished the book! The last line came from chapter 45: “God walks with you, Claire. He always will. You can count on him.”
There are risks, of course: names change, you have to write in things you didn’t anticipate, you forget what you’ve already written, you may repeat yourself, chapters often need to be reordered.
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Michelle, do you outline at the onset of a story idea? I find that scene cards on Scrivener come in handy since you can shuffle them around.
On the most recent editing pass of my MS I revised out of order, from back to front. A challenging and revealing process to be sure.
Thanks for giving us a view into the way you do things.
Yes, Jenni, I have an outline. This book in particular, I thought, was well thought out and ready to go, but as I got deeper into the research, things changed. I don’t use Scrivener, but I looked at it the other day because I wanted a program to do a word census–tell me what words I’m overusing. Scrivener apparently has that feature but after 103K words, I wasn’t ready to figure out yet another program on the fly. Maybe next time. 🙂
I usually write in a linear fashion, but on this book . . . WWI took its toll! 🙂
I guess God might be doing something like this, too, since He knows the end of the story. As people go their way instead of sticking with His best plan then He is having to rework some details in the middle of the story. 🙂
LOL! Maybe that’s why some of us struggle to get ahead of what God has in mind, Janice?