Story progress

[marydell]

I managed to steal a half-hour of writing time, so I got the last two scenes of my short story "The Dig" down on paper, finally.

Now I just have to write all of the scenes that precede them.

Comments

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

So, you don't write sequentially, and put down on paper the scenes that are the most 'ready' in your mind? Do you already know how the story will lead to that final scene? Or did you write that last scene hoping that it would crystallize the plot's possibly nebulous elements in your mind? Being married to a writer, I find fascinating hearing how others do it.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Usually - I work all the key stuff out in my head, starting with the story and some phrases and conversations. Then I diagram the plot on paper as a drawing, and identify any holes or places that it's not balanced. Then I write out the scene that the story is really driving toward, kind of as a keystone--usually the end scene, because I lean toward epiphany stories. In this case I've written the denoument but not the climax--that's mostly worked out in my head though.

Then I start at the beginning and write in order, with big chunks being just notes describing scenes that I still need to make up. My writing method is partly influenced by having noodled with animation--in 3d animation, you set up "keyframes" of all the critical positions for your figure or scene, and then the software interpolates the frames in between so you don't have to animate everything. I have to write everything myself, of course, but I tend to work out "keyframes" in my plot that everything hangs on, because it's easier for me to write the inbetween stuff on a second pass. This isn't because I'm a good animator--I utterly suck at animation--but the concept has proved very useful for me in terms of developing a writing process. I also use outlines a lot for longer works, because my academic background is all in expository essay-writing and I'm comfortable with those tools.

In this case, it's a story about an archaeological dig, and there are parallel stories--one is a personal story about people and feelings, and the other is the history that they're excavating. So I haven't written any of the history scenes, and I'm still working out in my head how those scenes will tie thematically to the relationship discoveries that are the real thing they're digging for. But the whole arc of the relationship story is there in my head, as well as a few phrases and bits.

Thanks for asking :)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

And my thanks to you for answering. It's always interesting to hear how various writers do it. I don't know about you, but it really annoys me when someone says that there is Only One True Way to writing a story - or to creating anything else, even a computer program.