I'm curious.

When writing a novel do most people start at Chapter One and keep going until they reach the last chapter then stop?

When writing a chapter, again, do you start at the beginning and write through to the end?

Does anyone start in the middle or work backwards or scribble notes for the bits that get in the way so they can get on with what they know is coming 2 pages later and want to get down now? Or put in description/ "frilly bits" afterwards?

Just wondering?

Sarah

I tend to have a forward flowing movement, but I do dot about, depending on what comes into my head. I often write the end (as well as the start) very early on, but then change it once I get there - sometimes very much so.

And, yes, I do like writing the sex scenes first (and, um, rewriting them), but, what the heck, who doesn't?!!

)

A
xxx

I start at the beginning and go through to the end, making a note to change anything I can't get right fairly quickly or need to change or check, and trying not to go back and fiddle. Until this novel I did that longhand, which I'd recommend to anyone who has trouble keeping forging ahead, then typed it up incorporating all the notes. This one I find I'm writing straight on to the computer, adn watching with interest to see if it has a different effect.

Emma

What I actually do is a sad confusion of angst, lost notes, attempts at reading illegible nocturnal handwriting, and spending an inordinate amount of time on making fair copies of something scribbled on the back of a shopping list or the margins of a newspaper.

But I'm at my happiest and most productive when I've got a detailed outline that enables me to jump around without getting lost. (Vague ideas, promising sentences, bits of choppy dialogue, etc. go into the outline.) I usually write detached but complete scenes that I later put in their rightful places with the help of the outline. What I aim at is planning my chapters so well in advance that I can write them straight through -- though I never write the chapters in the right order, because the order in which the plot unfolds is rarely the order in which the elements connect in my mind, if that makes any sense. And like HollyB, I often write the ending first, though I may change it later. I just like to know where I'm going.

(For some reason I keep thinking that this kind of productive serenity would be much easier to achieve when you're writing on the balcony of your villa in Capri, with a fine Mediterranean view opening before your eyes and a gentle breeze playing with your hair... though I may be misguided )

What a lovely and thought-provoking question.

I think I write, starting at the beginning and proceeding in a logical and almost regimental fashion but to be honest I'm not sure, for I am aware of quite long passages being written deliberately to be inserted as the main storyline catches up.

Len

I am like Len, and always, in all instances, write laterally. I get the basic skeleton down, then, much like a crazed gardner with a hedgetrimmer and a pair of secatares, do the shaping, unstitching, repainting and polishing. I find both immensely enjoyable. Editing is fun when you read things back and think 'ouch', and I always try to read my finished work as if I am not JB but some other reader.

JB (I think)

Well, I've only completed one novel (unpblished). I wrote chapter 1, then chapters 16 and 17. I fell in love with 16 and 17 and had to fit the entire plot round them! It's worked out (I think,) but I won't ever do it that way again. Once I'd got myself into that trap I worked out the plot in some detail before going on though the ending has changed considerably since the first draft.

Naomi

Well, I have an outline. I'm on chapter 3 of book 2 which contains (among other things)a brief recap of a section in the last chapter of book 1 and so far I have 5 new characters, none of whom appear in the outline though one has a brief(unnamed)cameo in book 1 which will now need rewriting!

I was reading a wonderful Diana Wynne Jones short story yesterday about Carol Oneir and the "cast of thousands" - and her six stock characters who rebel. It's gorgeous!

Sarah

What's the name of the book, Sarah? The story sounds very interesting!

It's "Mixed Magics" (The Worlds of Chrestomanci) - the story is called "Carol Oneir's Hundreth Dream" - my daughter brought it home from the school library but I only got my hands on it because she was engrossed in "Sir Thursday" - that's my story, anyway...

Sarah

Thanks! Do you know if I should read other Chrestomanci novels first? Those have been on my list for ever, so I wouldn't exactly mind doing that, mind you...

You don't have to but you could?

There's Charmed Life, the Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week and The Lives of Christopher Chant - just to be going on with...

Sarah

A to B, but what B is changes all the time. My novel started with a different path but as I wrote it, it began to suggest ideas to me, new ways it could go. The finished first draft was so much different to what I had in mind when I started. Then I read the printed first draft and realised that it worked better to start with something that was originally in chapter 4. And so on. Each reading uncovers a different thing. Write it all A to B, it's only when you get to the end that you should go back and tinker.

With the second one, which I started in January, I had a basic story in mind, but as I thought more, other things came into play. So I sat down and wrote a very rough sketch of the first four chapters with the rest of the novel in mind. After writing three chapters I now have to rewite the plan for Ch 4 and have more material to work into further chapters.

But whatever systems works for you is best, when all is said and done.

Michael

Longhand on blank clean A4 (hole punch in top left with treasury tag or whatever they're called) from chpt one and skipping tricky or 'stumbly' bits to come back to later. MS usually ends up with masses of post-its, pieces of A5 jotter & scraps of little notes tagged into it, future snatches of dialogue, plot points etc. Like others, I love the magic of the edit, seeing the book rise from the ashes of the first (clunky) draft...
What could be more fun?