Thread: Scenes I haven't written

If I ever get to it, my leading man will kill another man in cold blood, in public, in broad daylight, in front of God and everybody and the reader. Maybe just so I can have the challenge of redeeming him after such a heinous act. Whatever.

...One of my major motivations as a writer often seems to be the prospect of finally getting to the point in a story where I can write a scene that's been in my head for (well, depending on how much lollygagging I've been doing) the past year or so. I avoid writing them (even though I often play them out in the shower when no one can hear me acting all the parts :p) because I fear that doing so will remove that motivation, but then of course I wake up another year later and realize I'm never going to write it because I've stopped work on that project for whatever reason.

What do you do with those scenes?

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As I am sure you have all noticed, there are primarily two camps responding to the question, here:

1) People who believe in planning a story thoroughly beforehand and who therefore believe that writing scenes in the order they'll appear in the story is unimportant.

2) People who believe in allowing a story to change according to its own whims as they write and who therefore have a very hard time writing things "out of order."

It seems most of us fall into one or the other. Perhaps an additional question would be: why do you approach the writing process the way you do?

I try to write them down, in one way or another.

Ideas can be born, live, and die in your mind, with no evidence of their ever having existed at all. But if you put them to paper, they become something tangible, something real.

They might not end up going anywhere useful, but then again, they just might. : )

There is nothing that says you have to write a story from the beginning. You can start in the middle or even the end and go back to the beginning later. Some people deliberately write that way. Having a middle or an end already written drives the set up and makes it so much easier to write. "By Chapter 10 my character must have met this other person, acquired this skill, and become motivated to do this act..."

I've been there (more times than I like to think about). The one scene that defines the whole story (or so it seems) - but there's all that slogging through to get to it! The funny thing is, once I start on the slogging part it tends to get just as motivating as the original scene. For me it's because of the characters starting to develop, and the odd paths the story takes to get to that scene. Of course, 9 times out of 10 I end up not even using that scene in that particular story. But it's always there for the next one

If I ever get an entire scene in my head then I write it out properly. If its just an idea for a scene I will make a note. If its a scene I entertain in my mind but doesn't really fit with the story I don't even make a note unless it comes back again.

I have a strange example to share: I originally wrote an entire novel about a group of people living in a society I had made up, so it had many scenes. After writing it I decided to rewrite it, with a different beginning. As I became engrossed in the rewrite, bits of this society of people started to get ditched, until I ended up with a new novel where they only occupied a single chapter. I have now got rid of that chapter and the book has no mention of them at all!

What do you think that means? That I am having trouble focusing during my rewrites?

Anyway the point is that my original motivation for the story is now nowhere to be seen!

If there's a scene I want in my story, I write it out. I've written entire chapters well in advance of the preceding ones at times, and the unfinished chapters all have various chunks of the story in them. That's the advantage of planning out your story ahead of time; though I've only completely written up to Chapter 24 in my current story, almost all of the following chapters all the way to the end of the book are at least half finished (sometimes more).

I do the same thing, if a scene is bugging me I write it down. It might not end up in the story I'm working on, but with modification it can fit somewhere else in another story.
I find when I get to that scene in the novel that I have to change some minor things, because the story takes on a life of it's own and goes places I hadn't thought of.
So write the scenes, it will make you feel good and you'll have something to work towards, a definit place to go. If it doesn't work, save it, do something else with it.

As I am sure you have all noticed, there are primarily two camps responding to the question, here:

1) People who believe in planning a story thoroughly beforehand and who therefore believe that writing scenes in the order they'll appear in the story is unimportant.

2) People who believe in allowing a story to change according to its own whims as they write and who therefore have a very hard time writing things "out of order."

It seems most of us fall into one or the other. Perhaps an additional question would be: why do you approach the writing process the way you do?

I try to have a clear beginning, middle, and end in mind before I begin to write.

Almost always, though, my story begins to change the moment I put the words to paper. Then my creative process becomes a battle between my pre-planned story, and the story that seems to be unfolding spontaneously. Usually the end-result is a compromise somewhere in the middle.

Originally Posted by archer88iv

It seems most of us fall into one or the other. Perhaps an additional question would be: why do you approach the writing process the way you do?

I'm an engineer. Our motto is, "Design it first. Build it right." That's been drilled into me, and writing any other way would just feel sloppy.

I always have my basic story worked out in my head before I even write the outline. For me, the process of writing only stops when I don't know what will happen next. If I have everything planned out beforehand, it allows me to work on pacing and continuity.

As for scenes that come to mind, I wouldn't try to force them in a story they don't belong. Save them, write them down if you have to, and recycle them when it's available.

Originally Posted by archer88iv

As I am sure you have all noticed, there are primarily two camps responding to the question, here:

1) People who believe in planning a story thoroughly beforehand and who therefore believe that writing scenes in the order they'll appear in the story is unimportant.

2) People who believe in allowing a story to change according to its own whims as they write and who therefore have a very hard time writing things "out of order."

It seems most of us fall into one or the other. Perhaps an additional question would be: why do you approach the writing process the way you do?

I think there's probably a third camp (maybe even a fourth) - those who allow the story to change sans the 'whims' and have to write sequentially because everything that happens is based on what has happened. And possibly this but can write out of sequence with the caveat that those scenes may not be used after all.

Me? I don't plan and I write sequentially (see the third camp) but if I think of a possible scene for the future, I'll make a note of it (note only - won't write it out) and it gets plastered to my wall - and then I may or may not use it depending on what happens in the meantime. Why do I write that way? No idea. I just always have (even though I've tried other methods unsuccessfully). I just don't want to know what happens before I get there.

I see my characters first. I visualise most of the story in my head like a movie. I can see who they are, why they do what they do, the things they like to say, what their personalities are like. I always know the beginning and the ending to a tee, but sometimes the middle is tricky, but fun. I like the writing out the middle the best, because it's all new to me. It's not something I visualised all that much. That's where I really get to know who my characters are. I love writing without a clear path on paper, because then my characters take me wherever they want to go. My writing depends on my mood too. So if I wrote down that in chapter three that I wanted my guy character to finally get up the nerve to ask his crush to the dance and she finally says yes. Well... if I've had a bad day that day. Maybe I make him suffer a little more. Maybe I make him feel a little heartache because she walks away from him without an answer, and he's left feeling bitter and rejected. That would have likely been something I skipped over had I had a good day.

Writing for me is not a formula that I can lay out, no matter how I try to do it that way. My stories just happen and unfold as I go, and things change as I get to know my characters better. It's just like getting to know someone in real life. At first I can think they're the bomb and would never hurt my feelings, and then, all of sudden I realise they're not so perfect. They're not who I built them up to be in my head. And so of course, sometimes my characters disappoint me, but then sometimes, I realise the bad guys, really aren't that bad. So it's all a really fun process just going with the flow.