Lots of helpful comments, thank you. I have had a surprisingly productive weekend. Once I managed to impose some discipline I have gone through the first 20,000 word plus fairly smoothly, and quite a few new things have come out of it, so I am going to try to stick to a broadly chronological method of working.

Having said that, I have written a couple of later passages that have jumped out at me, mainly arising from prompts from the early chronological writing. I have also left one gap which I don't feel positive about tackling at the moment - it is something very specific and will draw on information from some of my grandfather's experiences at sea. I need to sit down and look at some old notes and photos before I tackle that particular passage.

As regards the issue of "filler", I don't really think of the gaps that I was leaving in that way. Some of them are actually scenes that I have put a lot of thought into over a long period of time, but they just weren't grabbing me. Although, this weekend has shown me that even if they aren't grabbing me, there is a lot to be said for grabbing them first and giving them a bit of a shake!

Lots of really interesting comments here. I tend to work chronologically, myself, but tried the 'pantser' approach on the WIP earlier this year. Two weeks in, and I reverted to my usual method.

I think that Emma's comments are spot on. Remember that if you allow yourself to think of certain sections as 'filler', your reader will, too - and therein lies a major missed opportunity. My antennae pricked at this - as with your mention of having various scenes floating about for several years now, and yet only 25,000 words written. Although the gestating period for a novel can easily span years to no ill effect, I do think there's something to be said for getting the writing done in a more concentrated time span - otherwise there's a risk that the novel you end up working on two years down the line is quite a different book from the novel you started writing two years earlier. If you're writing the scenes out of order, this can manifest itself in a pretty bumpy read!

But sounds as if you're properly in the saddle now, so do keep at it. And best of luck!

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Sorry, Deb - yes, I was confusing 'pantser' with 'writing-out-of-orderer'

Slightly hijacking the thread, Rosy, but as a 'pantser', how do you formulate the climax and end of the novel? I am pantsing, and it seems fine till I get to needing to climax and finish - now I feel I need to plot that. Any advice?

With some difficulty, Deb! (One answer would be - what climax? What plot? I'm not big on plot at all, really.) By the time I get near the end I usually have some sense of the big stuff that has to happen, and that is - I'll admit - sometimes the point where I do sit down and plan - at least a list of scenes and two lines about what has to happen in each, so I can get them into a logical running order. I certainly remember doing that with MTLL - making a list of the final ten or so letters/e-mails, and then shuffling them into an order which made sense, to tie off all the story lines. And I have some recollection of doing the same with H&M, which felt like a big, confusing beast, and I needed to make a mini-plan of the last three or four chapters to get it under control. By CW I was just winging it, I think, even at the end (but that book's crap). And TTOL just wrote itself, really, all the way through.

R x

Rosy, thanks very much - that fits with what I was thinking of doing, so is very useful. I'm about 20k from the end of the novel and feel I need to do a little basic planning to tie everything up in a satisfactory way. Until now, the shape has been in my head and kept things going in the right direction.

Tribly, I think, when we're saying 'pantser', we're meaning 'writing by the seat of the pants' (ie, not planning/plotting much in advance) rather than not writing chronologically. Is that what you meant, Rosy?

I wonder if most pantsers write character-driven books? Even though my WIP is a thriller, it's a character-led thriller, which is probably unusual (and may either be really good or really bad as a result... )

Deb

Yes, by 'pantsing' I meant not planning - which for me necessarily means writing chronologically rather than dotting about, because I don't know how later bits are going to go until I get there.

R x

Rosy - yes, I thought that too! You can't really pants and dot about - just doesn't work.

Deb

Actually - and I don't know if she's been following this thread - I'm sure that Sally Nicholls one posted about doing just this, ie. writing scenes as they come, and then organising them into a story according to the plotline that they suggest.

Not sure exactly how much pre-planning this would involve - could be interesting to hear if she's around to chip in?..

Yes, I'm sure Sally said that's how she works.

I think it's probably something fundamental about how each writer's creative brain actually works, and so I suspect that once you've discovered whether you're a patchwork merchant or a forward-marching soldier, that's probably what you are.

But I do think it's worth remembering something that Anne Brooke, late of this parish, once said: that each book is different, and so each book may need a different process. I can certainly imagine it being true of slightly less fundamental, though important, decisions about process, such as when you do your research, and how much planning you do before you start, and so on. Even, perhaps, if you write the kind of thing I do, whether you write one whole strand, and then the other, or write it in the order it'll come in the book, and so on.

And what about diary entries, say? Or some other intermittent scrap where it'll be difficult to sustain the voice if you only write a scrap at a time. I wrote all the little nightmares for the end of each chapter of TMOL, all in one fell swoop (and 'fell' was the word: I wrote them in a weekend and by the end was ready to top myself...).

Worth thinking about, anyway, if your novels are made up of lots of different elements/voices/documents/periods etc. I'd love to know how Byatt constructed Possession...

Emma

That's interesting, Emma, because I must say that when I have written books with several narrative voices (thinking especially of H&M), each time I've got to the end of a scene in one voice and gone back to pick up another, I have to do some reading back to get myself back in voice. It would make a lot of sense to write all the scenes in one voice in a block, wouldn't it? If you were a planner and knew what had to happen in each storyline, this might be a really good way to work.

R x

Yes, it can take a while to get back into it, can't it. The more different they are, the easier, I think, though: would she use this word? How do her sentences feel? I had a rule that the first sentence of each section had to be particularly characteristic: had both to be typical of the voice and say something - place, name - which mean the reader was immediately located. By the time I'd worked out that sentence technically, on the whole my ears were hearing the right voice. It's one of those things where you don't have to rely on intuition, and be lost if it doesn't arrive. You can tackle the problem in cold blood, and then your lagging intuition will catch up.

I've only done it in a wodge for little bits like those nightmares - in TMOL I already had Stephen's letters. If I'd had to do them from scratch too, I think I might have written them all in a wodge. As I recall I did in the earlier novel they inhabited, because they weren't part of narrative and they didn't really affect the plot, except in the emotional sense: essentially they were standalone. But it's about a century ago, so I can't remember.

So I wonder it depends on whether the different categories of narrative, if you can call it that, have a plot-function, or are more standalone. I don't think I could do it for the main voices of the narrative, because I'd get into a pickle with the main chain of plot if I didn't write chronologically.

Even with standalone bits it takes a bit of tracking. It's largely why I evolved my plotting grid: to track things like which of Stephen's nightmares came at the ends of which chapter, because they had to cast a shadow in the modern strand of the following chapter. Same with the letters: what had Anna read of his story, which affected how she behaved? I couldn't possibly hold that in my head.

Emma

Another onward marching soldier here.

I start at the beginning and move forward.
I alternate POV scenes (using around four or five in the WIP) so, as others have said, I have to reorientate myself.

That's not to say however, that some scenes don't steal into my mind fully formed ahead of themselves. What I do then, is make a note, so that at the right moment I can pick them up. But you can't let yourself be sidetracked I find, otherwise you constantly leap to the fun scenes and don't give enough head space to the scenes that actually structure the book.

It's also not to say either that I don't sometimes have gaps. If I really really can't get a scene I will make a short note...Joe needs to speak to Clem here, but how and why...and move on.

Then I go back when it comes to me.

HB x

I've got 3 story strands in my WIP, and I've pretty much written each as a forward marching soldier, but separately.

At 3/4 of the way through the book, I am now having to think horizontally as well as vertically (IYSWIM) because the 3 strands are integrating now and the characters actually invading each other's scenes.

Deb

I think it's different for different projects - I'm writing my fourth novel now. The first one was unfinished and unpublished. The next two are. The first one I wrote in pieces, depending on what particilar scene attracted my attention at the time. It was unfinished and unpublished largly because it was stolen on a laptop I was working on at the time, although even if I had have finished it I doubt very much it would have been published / publishable.

The second novel - A Kind of Intimacy - was written in exactly the same way. It was hard and the editing and rewriting was gruesome. But it got published, nice reviews, a prize etc. The third novel - Cold Light - written piece meal again, even though I tried very hard to plan because I thought it would make the editing and rewriting less gruesome. It didn't work out like that, and yes, the editing was horrific. It comes out soon.

My fourth novel - I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I've been writing it from start to finish, to a plan, and am feeling very comfy writing that way for the first time ever. Maybe the editing will be less traumatic this time? Maybe not. Who knows? Maybe I'm more experienced now and am finally able to write in the 'proper' way - maybe my process is developing, maybe each novel demands it is told and written in a particular way.

I think it's fairly prescriptive to say that any particular method of writing is more or less likley to get you published - I bet loads and loads of published writers who don't talk about their methods publicly wrote like this.

Though I wonder if we as writers are more likley to dart about our first drafts now we have computers and the glories of cut n paste. If I was hand writing the whole thing, maybe it would be different? It would be interesting to know how it was done in other ages compared to how it is done now.

Actually - scrap that - I hand wrote the entire first draft of Cold Light and still did it piece by piece, out of order.

And for what it's worth - I write novels that are literary / crime / thriller cross over - plot is important, twists and turns and pace are important, even though I wouldn't say my books were classic examples of any genre.

Hope this helps, AnneC

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Gah! Sorry for shocking spelling and typing all through this post. I was / am holding a baby, and a terrible, terrible speller at the best of times.

I've not read the whole thread properly but I will go back and read it as it looks fascinating and very useful for me too, so thanks for starting it off, Anne!
A couple of thoughts:
1) You remind me of me! My first attempts at books (and they remained unfinished) were written in just this way. It might just be a writing stage you need to get through.
2) If you have a small child (as you mentioned), I'm not surprised you find your writing happens like this - I expect it is moments snatched where possible. It might be okay not to be too hard on yourself if this is practically all you can manage, maybe haphazard writing is better than none?
3) Try making a thorough plan before doing the actual writing. Then you will have a structure to follow.
4) What I do now is write a fast first draft, chronologically, but if there are bits I don't want to/ can't write some some reason, I write a summary in capitals of what happens at that point, e.g. THEY GO TO THE DESERTED WAREHOUSE AND HE TELLS HER THE TRUTH ABOUT HER MOTHER) and highlight it so it stands out in the manuscript. Then I can go back to it later and fill in the gaps.
5) I'm also sure that Sally said she wrote like this - but I also remember her saying on here that she ended up with editing problems later.

she ended up with editing problems later.

This (the possible tact and understatement) made me laugh. I didn't use the word 'gruesome' in my post above for nothing.

Still, I knew I would have to chop the book up, throw half of it away and rewrite the rest. I didn't mind. I count the piecemeal first draft as my thinking time. Maybe (in fact I am certain) the writers who do a chronological first draft are able to think or plan without a pen in their hand.

Different, not better.

Perhaps children to have something to do with it - I have small ones too.