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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November 16 2011, 00:34:59 UTC 9 years ago