Piecing it All Together

Some books want to be linear. You get a nice, neat formula that takes you from point A to point B, you may find you have to detour at point C, but whatever. You mostly get to The End without a hitch.

The has never happened to me. My books are archeological digs with millions of bone shards that I have to put together a single piece at a time only to find out that psych! That piece doesn't really go here, it goes way over there.

Here's what I can say about the process, though.

I always have a general idea of the thing I'm digging up. I know the ending. I may not know how I'm going to get there or how I'm going to reconcile beginning to end, but the ending of the book is my starting point. I know where my characters must end up. Then I look for a beginning based on the characters' flaws and/or weaknesses. Some books can be written beginning to end. They are rare for me. Far more often, I write scenes from all over the place. I'm firmly of the opinion that if I don't know what happens next in a story, I move on to where ever I DO know what happens. This is wasteful. I do write scenes I end up not being able to use. One some books, it means overwriting the book to the point that I have two of the thing. It's useful in that I gain insight into what the core conflict of the book is. Eventually. The day comes, however, when I have to take my collection of disparate and oddly jointed scenes, pin them together into a skeleton, sculpt some flesh and features and see what looks back at me.

That's the easy part. Getting the original bones out of the ground, that's hard. Once I have a collection of scenes, I can pin those together with transitional scenes and a the glue of a few sentences about POV character drives. The initial revision pass polishes up the structure, and adds the flesh. It's the developmental editor who really gets me to put the features on the critter. We glue in the glass eyeballs so they stare into you no matter where you go. The copy editor does the airbrushing to make it look like it could move at any second.

Yeah. I far prefer the archeology metaphor to knitting or weaving. Cause, dinosaurs! and I guess I'm still twelve.

Why I avoid knitting...scenes that is.

I’m a Type A, technically-minded person…that’s why I was a laboratorian! And working in lab you’re trained to follow point A to point Z in the correct order. 

And knitting is like that. You follow a pattern, you piece it together in a certain way. So I should be good at knitting? Except…we’re not talking about the yarn kind of knitting today. We’re talking about knitting scenes of a book together.

So it’s really not surprising that I write from beginning to end; no detours, no skipping ahead, no passing go to collect $200 dollars. It’s how my brain is wired. And knowing how your own brain works is key.

Some writers I know need the candy bar method Vivien mentioned yesterday. They have that one perfect scene complete in their head and once they put it to paper, the creative floodgates open and they can knit their story together. Does that way of writing work for you?

If so, huzzah! Go forth and write! If it doesn’t…maybe your brain’s more analytical and the following might help. 

Each book I’ve written, and the manuscripts I’ve outlined and started, all began with that one perfect scene for me. Usually the scene comes from one of my dreams, like it’s been handed to me in a mini-movie format. But I never try to write it as a chapter right away. Because…that would be out of order.

Instead, I take my perfect scene, or you take your instigating idea, and sketch out the scene in outline format so I don’t forget the details.

*Note: I always know exactly where my scene fits in my story: beginning, end, climactic moment etc. If you don’t know this yet, take some time to brainstorm and ask yourself: what happens after, what needs to happen before, what changes for your MC (main character) in this scene?

Now that you know exactly where your perfect scene/idea sits in the timeline, it’s synopsis time! 

*Second Note: Lots of writers do not use a detailed outline/synopsis to write. YMMV This step is included here because my technical brain follows a well-laid plan easiest.

When writing my synopsis I build from or around my originating scene and the rest of the world and plot details flow from there. I like to go for super detailed here…remember, lab girl here? The more detail and direction I put down in this stage the better off I am in the drafting stage and THE LESS I HAVE TO TRY KNIT IN LATER!

All that because I suck at knitting in scenes. Why? I say it’s because when I plot out my books I do a lot of detail on the frontside and when I’ve needed to weave in new scenes that change things in the timeline…it gets messy. 

Sort of like Ullr’s rope bone that started out all tightly woven together (pictured at top of post). The rope was smooth and strong, but once my pup started tugging here and there it began to unravel in spots. That's what I feel like happens to my books when I mess with them and try to knit in scenes. 

So I do my best to not have to, or at least not have to knit in major scenes that shift the trajectory of the story. That’s like…like, your chemistry analyzer going down before you even get your day’s samples loaded! 

I’ll keep attempting to avoid that nightmare. How ‘bout you? Do you avoid knitting or are you a master weaver?

Do You Knit... or WEAVE?

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is... knitting? Did our calendar guru pick this for Mother's Day week, or is it a coincidence?

Anyway, it's not the knitting you think. (Or not the knitting *I* thought.) We're asking each other if we write scenes piece by piece and knit them together, or if we have ever had to knit-in scenes?

I am not a knitter. If I go for a textile metaphor, I'd say I'm a weaver. I line up all the threads, begin at one end with nothing but a lot of colors and textures, and then I weave them gradually into a tapestry. That said, I've occasionally had to weave scenes, themes, and clues into the finished story - which is probably what the topic poser is getting at here.

It just doesn't feel like knitting to me.

For example, for developmental edits on THE FIERY CROWN (out in only two weeks!! preorder now!! Eeee!!!), my editor Jennie Conway asked me to add in some scenes early in the book. She wanted to see some of the secondary characters sooner. She also wanted discussion of a later issue to happen sooner. So I ended up adding two scenes and fleshing out a couple of others.

The thing is, this isn't like patching a tire or splicing a soundbite into a podcast (which I've learned to do!). Nor is it like reworking some part of a painting. That's why I think of it as weaving. In order to add scenes and characters to an earlier point in the tapestry, I have to adjust the warp and weft before that to accommodate them. Then I have to alter the pattern of the threads thereafter, to keep the texture even and the pattern tight.

It was all for good reasons - and made for a better book - but yeah... I don't knit. Either in my writing or in real life!

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