I make sequencing errors all the time in fiction, though I've learned to watch for them and edit out most before they reach my first-reader. Why? Once I step outside the temporal gravity well of the consensus spacetime continuum, nothing is linear; it's all a jumble of points floating in space. I'll often get the beginning and end first -- not necessarily in that order -- and then random chunks of the middle. So writing a story is like putting a puzzle together. Sometimes I get things in the right order, but there's often something out of place that has to be repositioned. I spend a lot of time asking myself, "If this is so, what had to happen before it and what is likely to happen after it?" By the time something reaches final draft, it's in the right order.
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- Elizabeth Barrette (
ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
- Mood:
busy
Putting a Story in Order
I make sequencing errors all the time in fiction, though I've learned to watch for them and edit out most before they reach my first-reader. Why? Once I step outside the temporal gravity well of the consensus spacetime continuum, nothing is linear; it's all a jumble of points floating in space. I'll often get the beginning and end first -- not necessarily in that order -- and then random chunks of the middle. So writing a story is like putting a puzzle together. Sometimes I get things in the right order, but there's often something out of place that has to be repositioned. I spend a lot of time asking myself, "If this is so, what had to happen before it and what is likely to happen after it?" By the time something reaches final draft, it's in the right order.
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Well...
November 15 2011, 16:03:15 UTC 9 years ago
Re: Well...
November 15 2011, 16:56:13 UTC 9 years ago
For me, an outline is kinda minimal;
a list of major events/turning points.
Each item gets copied to the top of a single page,
then all the pages are torn out of the notebook
and put into a binder thingummy,
so I can move them around if I need to,
or add a page or remove a page or replace a page
if things have changed that much.
But, yeah, once I know what has to happen during breakfast,
simply knowing that it all happens before lunch
doesn't help me to put the breakfast details in order.
For that, notes go on the
I. A. 1. Breakfast page...