I used to write my stories out-of-order. I had an outline of my book, so I’d write whatever scene I felt like that day, anything from the opening to the climax. But it caused problems. 'Your pacing is all over the place' an editor told me. I spent hours re-writing scenes to get them to actually fit into the story. Subplots popped up randomly, looking more like a fabric scraps than a ribbon woven into the story.
I now avoid writing out-of-order for these four reasons:
I now avoid writing out-of-order for these four reasons:
- It ruined my pacing. Pacing refers to the intensity level of a story. It’s best to alternate between high-intensity and low-intensity scenes, but when I was writing whatever I wanted, I ended up with a string of slow scenes followed by non-stop action that exhausted my reader. If I had been writing the scenes in order, I would have caught this while writing.
- It’s harder to develop new ideas. Let’s say I discover an interesting concept while writing an early chapter and want to include more of that concept into my story. Writing in-order makes it easy, but if I’ve already written later scenes, I have to cram that new concept into my preexisting chapter.
- I lost cause and effect. Many chapters in my sci-fi book could be switched with each other because they were disconnected from the scene that came before and after.
- Reading in-order is how your story is experienced. When I was bouncing between my favorite scenes, there were only a few times I read my story the way it was meant to be experienced: In order.
However, there are two times I will write out-of-order:
- If I feel stuck, I’ll sometimes skip ahead to a more exciting scene, get into the writing groove, then return to the original point.
- If I’m writing a subplot, I’ll write those scenes together. Right now, I have a prisoner subplot from his point-of-view, and I’m writing his scenes back-to-back.
Do you prefer writing in-order or out-of-order?
