Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Putting a Story in Order

Read about story 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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  • 6 comments
msstacy13

msstacy13

November 14 2011, 18:16:23 UTC 9 years ago

While I'm not a proponent of outlining,
this is a case where ordered notes can be quite helpful.
ysabetwordsmith

Well...

ysabetwordsmith

November 15 2011, 16:03:15 UTC 9 years ago

If I'm writing a complicated story and I know a bunch of things that have to happen, I can jot those down. If I have scene fragments in mind, I can write those down too. That helps me KEEP things in order. It doesn't help me PUT them in order. If it's in the wrong sequence within the outline, it'll be wrong in the story too.
msstacy13

Re: Well...

msstacy13

November 15 2011, 16:56:13 UTC 9 years ago

Good point.

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...
je_reviens

je_reviens

November 15 2011, 21:44:59 UTC 9 years ago

That is really interesting. I have never been able to write fiction bc I always believe I need to have a beginning, then know what happens next, then next, and then next. And I never do!
ysabetwordsmith

*laugh*

ysabetwordsmith

November 16 2011, 04:22:22 UTC 9 years ago

I almost never write like that, although I've heard some people do.
laylalawlor

laylalawlor

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

Oh, that's an excellent article, and very timely for me because I'm doing revisions right now, so I'll keep an eye open for this sort of thing as I revise. Thank you for the link! :)