The writing process/Answered

[Viking Princess]

I was just cleaning out my notebooks from the last semester to put them away until the fall one starts. I was looking at my notes from Adv. Creative Writing and was wondering....

Do you write in a completely linear fashion or do you jump back and forth? My professor made us experiment in writing opening scenes after having written the conclusion and things like that. I know some authors (Diana Gabaldon has said she does this) write scenes separately and then put them back together in the main body of the work. When I write I am particularly bad at writing whole scenes in dialogue and then returning later to fill in descriptions, actions, and thoughts. So I guess I am asking if you write from beginning to end, or do you write in pieces and then patch it together...like a quilt. lol, I am being nosy today :p

[MissAmy]

I have to write inorder so I don't confuse myself...lol

[BeachyBobbie]

I am a jumper. I can see a scene and I figure out where to put it later. lol

[Karen Marie]

My Highlander and Fever series are apples and oranges. In my Highlander series, I always began at the beginning but about halfway through, the end scenes would start coming so vividly that I would put aside where I was currently writing, and frantically scribble the endings, then stuff them in a folder until later. Also, sometimes scenes of out-of-order dialogue would come, and I would write it, sans taglines and environ (as you said) to be patched in at a future date, when the storyline got there. (If it's good enough dialogue, it doesn't need much in the way of tagline and location.)

My Fever series is totally different. I'm completely linear on it. Not one scene comes out of order except for the stories about Fae history, which you haven't seen yet but will. Those have been with me for years, and many of those are already written. Aside from that, I start at page one and write to the end, then usually re-work the beginning a little to give it a kind of book-end feel (even if only metaphorically).

I suspect that if I wrote my Highlander novels now, they, too, would come in order. I think I've just become a more disciplined writer and instead of letting my mind leap ahead to an interesting scene I'm really excited about writing (and mulling it over and suddenly getting energized and rushing to my computer, knocking people out of my way in haste to get there:) I try to find the way to make the next scene the one I'm really excited about because if I'm not, my reader won't be either.

Having a solid idea where the ending is going makes it a lot easier, but don't be afraid to let your story surprise you some along the way.

[Viking Princess]

Thanks Karen :) It is always neat to hear how books were put together. And I love that I am not alone in doing the straight dialogue scenes before coming back to fill it in lol.

[tempest]

Karen, thank you for such a detailed answer. It's always interesting to see how an artist's mind works, thanks for sharing a glimpse!

[Butterfly]

Thanks for the insite, Karen. I'm always impressed by a writer's abilty to express her self. I guess because I'm so terrible at it. I tried writting a book once..............

[squarepegroundhole]

I usually have that ADD kick in, and write on several different projects at once...It isn't that I get bored, it's just that there are so many different story lines running through my head at once that I have to skip around to each one. Just so you know, I have seven in the works right now. Two of which are series beginners. If I couldn't write, I think that I would go crazy waiting for Karen's latest installment of the Fever series!! LOL

[BeachyBobbie]

Thanks Karen!