Rebecca K. Brasby
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Why I Write My Novels in Order

11/13/2023

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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.
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I now avoid writing out-of-order for these four reasons:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
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    Home schooled and speculative fiction writer.

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