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I've found as I've gotten deeply into my novel that I am wandering all over the story arcs, and writing the stories in non-linear order. Anybody else find this?
Posts: 8 | Registered: Oct 2009
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Sometimes a scene or a snippet of conversation for something that happens later in the story will just occur to me. Usually when I'm not writing--like in the shower or while I'm walking the dogs. As soon as I can, I write them down.
Depending on what I'm writing (attempted short story vs. novel) I will either put it directly in the file I'm working on, in roughly the place I expect to use it, or in a separate file in the folder, usually called "Scraps". If I can't get to the computer right away, I find a piece of paper and jot it down, so it won't escape.
Some of them, I never use. But all of them at least tell me something about the characters or the story.
On Dreamer's Rose, since I'm essentially expanding a novella into a novel (hopefully), I have a complete structure already in place and I'm a little more free to move around if I want or need to.
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I'm pretty linear, but I do jump around as far as split narratives or flashbacks.
If I recall, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison is non-linear. There's definitely an artistic precedent for doing it. But it's a high bar to get over at times.
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Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is the most nonlinear story I've read, probably the most nonlinear and still sensible story ever written. The last stats I'd heard on it was it sold over five million copies. I believe that Slaughterhouse was an experimental fiction for Vonnegut, but then most of his fiction writing was to some extent experimental, like his other bestselling novel Breakfast of Champions.
I suspect he was testing the limits of time skipping, through backstory, flashback, and flash forward with Slaugherhouse and still telling a great story. He hit the goal in my opinion. He certainly tested the limits of narrative point of view with Breakfast, imperative first person with god-like omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent psychic access. Same, he pegged it with Breakfast. In other words, he "questioned" several of the absolutes and authorities of creative writing principles, and found them not absolutes.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 16, 2009).]
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I write scenes as they come to me. They're usually linear but I actually have things written that don't happen for another five or six books. Of course I realize that it may all get scrapped by the time I get there or it may be a plot point to shoot for. But if it's burning at the front of my brain I need to write it to clear that space out for more current work.
And I agree with Meredith, if nothing else you'll learn something about your characters, or the world or you'll just get in some good old writing practice.
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Stories certainly don't have to be told in linear fashion. To do so with multiple plot-lines can put a huge strain on the structure and pacing of a story.
Neither do they have to be written in the order they'll be read. I'd say at least 80% of my stories are written in bits and pieces and then filled in/pieced together - probably only the flash-size pieces are the ones where I actually write from beginning to end (and that's usually because they have been written for an LH flash challenge, to a tight time deadline).
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I try to avoid it...especially in a long work, where I wind up writing the bits that interest me and not writing the material that links them up. As for the story itself being non-linear, well, I've tried my hand at that a couple of times, but generally haven't much liked the results.
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Another book that jumps all over the place chronologically is CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It starts by telling you that everyone in the village knew that a certain guy was going to be murdered that day, and it ends with the murder. But it isn't really about the murder (whodunit or how). It's about how people could let it happen and why and how people reacted to it after it happened, and so on.
I believe it's called a "revelatory novel" because it explores character rather than "what happens next." So the order of what you read in the story is determined by how the things it explores relate to each other, and not by chronology.
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Thanks for the input folks - I was definitely referring to bits and pieces coming to me that aren't necessarily coming in linear order, but after being written down as "scraps", are filed in rough order in the story.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Oct 2009
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I don't know about novels, but I dont generally write things out of chronological order, though they may come to me that way. Because I view my stories so holistically I've never really seen much appeal in writing disconnected parts and trying to put them together (I'm speaking purely for myself here.) A lot of times I will get essentially a begining or ending and then have to figure out the rest either before hand or as I go along, but since its all interconnected and one thing is part of another I always, so far, write from begining to end.
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
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A recent sci-fi thriller with a non-linear structure is Eric Garcia's "Repossession Mambo". (He's the same guy who did the Anonymous Rex series, if you've read those, but this is nothing like them.) The non-linearity has a purpose: The story is about men who repossess artificial organs when someone can't pay, so there's a certain "parts is parts" mentality about the whole thing. The sense of disconnectedness fits the main character's psychology. (How disconnected? The book is in first person, and the main character is never even named.) I may be biased, since I know the author.
I would still tend to look at nonlinearity as a technique or a trick rather than a style I'd normally want to use. When it has a purpose, okay, and if it doesn't, why make it harder for your reader?
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