Nonlinear process

I’ve been thinking a lot about process lately, which is common when I’m in the middle of a book. It’s especially understandable this time, because this book isn’t working the way my process usually goes.

Normally, I’m very much a linear writer. I start with Chapter One and continue through Chapter Two and Three, in order, on and on until I get to the end of the book. It doesn’t matter if the internal chronology is in order or not – if there are flashbacks, they don’t get written first and stuck in like raisins in a scone. They get written in the same order that the reader reads them in.

This isn’t ever a 100% rock-solid method, mind. There are always times when I have an idea for a bit of dialog or a paragraph of action that doesn’t belong in the current scene, but it’s usually no more than a paragraph, so I can stick it into my plot outline or Notes file and hang on to it for later. Sometimes, later comes; other times, later turns out to be never, because the story went in a different direction from the one I expected. But the bulk of the story generally gets written in order.

This book, though, is not exactly developing linearly. My main plotline/central story problem has several distressingly large gaps in its progression. Several of the subplots aren’t tied in to the main plot closely enough yet, and if I can’t get them to do that, they’re going to feel like padding or interruptions. There are several events that have to occur, but they don’t have to happen at a particular point or in a particular order. Consequently, I keep writing bits and then moving them around, instead of going in order, start to finish.

The interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that this is a matter of process, not a matter of story content or structure. That is, when this thing is finished, I anticipate that it will be a linear narrative, no flashbacks, nothing “out of order.” It’s just getting written in a jumble. That’s the process that my backbrain wants to use on this story.

The other interesting thing (again, to me) is that one of the reasons I think this is behaving this way is that the plotlines (so far) are somewhat modular. There aren’t as many cross-connections as I usually have – that is, the central storyline has events A-B-C that happen in that order, but also events @ and # that need to happen, but don’t have an obvious, logical place where they belong. The major subplot has events 1-2-3 that occur in order but that also don’t slot into any obvious places in the central story spine. They could happen A-1-B-2-C-3, or A-B-1-2-C-3, or not get started until after scene F or H.

Normally, my main plotline goes A-B-C-D-E-F and my subplot goes b-c-e-f or a-b-d-f, and any “extra” events that need to happen are B1, D1, and D2 – that is, the incidents and events of the plot and subplots all tie pretty clearly to the chronological cause-and-effect order of the central plot. It’s a lot more difficult to move scenes and chunks of subplot around when subplot scene b must come before main plot scene C and after main plot scene B.

The thing that I’ve always liked about working linearly is that I generally end up with a really tight plotline. Everything drives the narrative forward, because it’s always clearly coming out of the scene before and moving thing on to the scene after – that’s all it can do, because when I’m writing scene C, I’ve already written both scene A and B (and a, b, and B1) that come before it, and I haven’t written any of the scenes that come after it. It’s very focused.

With this book, I started off A-B-C-D-E, then realized I needed @ and 1 in there somewhere, and that what I thought was going to be E and F actually belonged right after B. And at present, I have something that looks sort of like A-B-@-1-E-2-a-F-C, if I stuck with what I’d originally thought the order of the scenes would be. (D is currently in storage; I expect it’ll go in somewhere farther down the line).

Writing this way is exceedingly flexible. It’s also, to some extent, freeing – if I get stuck on scene E, I can skip to work on scene 2, or #, or a. I also find it a bit nerve-wracking, though it’s not quite as bad as completely making it up as I go along. It is, however, an interesting challenge.