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teaberryblueI am just over 45,000 words into the story I am working on now. It's interesting because the last time I wrote a novel-length story, I spent a lot of time and energy fleshing out a detailed outline before I even began, and I would just look at my outline and write the next scene on it.
This time, I'm doing a lot more exploratory writing. I have a rough idea of where the plot needs to go, but a lot of details that didn't resolve, and I just forced myself to write through it anyway. I'm also writing scenes out of order a lot more; I have the scenes organized based on their linear order, but I'll write them and then pop them into their proper place. I have some scenes from the end of the story written. There are good tings and bad things about this.
One thing that happens is that I obviously have to change what happens a little bit in those later scenes as I figure out how the earlier scenes go.
Another thing that has been happening is that I'll be in the middle of a later scene and just come upon a huge realization for something that would make the story better, and have to figure out whether I should just keep writing and finish with a disjointed manuscript that has a lot of continuity problems, and fix it all at once, or if I should fix those scenes first. I realized tonight a few things that will really help the plot in terms of creating higher stakes, and they mean rewriting a lot of early scenes.
I've also got a lot of scenes that I probably just plain will end up not using. That's okay.
Anyway, it's an interesting experience. The stuff I came up with tonight is really just leaving me with more questions and I feel a bit more like I had better outline some more before going any further with this.
This time, I'm doing a lot more exploratory writing. I have a rough idea of where the plot needs to go, but a lot of details that didn't resolve, and I just forced myself to write through it anyway. I'm also writing scenes out of order a lot more; I have the scenes organized based on their linear order, but I'll write them and then pop them into their proper place. I have some scenes from the end of the story written. There are good tings and bad things about this.
One thing that happens is that I obviously have to change what happens a little bit in those later scenes as I figure out how the earlier scenes go.
Another thing that has been happening is that I'll be in the middle of a later scene and just come upon a huge realization for something that would make the story better, and have to figure out whether I should just keep writing and finish with a disjointed manuscript that has a lot of continuity problems, and fix it all at once, or if I should fix those scenes first. I realized tonight a few things that will really help the plot in terms of creating higher stakes, and they mean rewriting a lot of early scenes.
I've also got a lot of scenes that I probably just plain will end up not using. That's okay.
Anyway, it's an interesting experience. The stuff I came up with tonight is really just leaving me with more questions and I feel a bit more like I had better outline some more before going any further with this.