My Lewis Carroll advice-taking (start at the beginning and go on until you reach the end) I expect may well be because I start with people, not with what they're doing. So here's a collection of people in my head, and then there's the big bright light - what if they..... - and then I put them at the little green line and push 'em out there.

That's true even on the rare occasions when I start with a concept. I have a scifi morality tale I want to go back to, that I started a few years back. That one began with a concept, a what-if, but immediately I began seeing the characters and wrapping the story around them. And since the what-if in this particular story is a very angry uprooted dryad? Also character.

You know, I really think I'm character rather than concept oriented, too. I get these people in my head, and start picturing how they'd interact, but not always in any chronological order.

And strictly speaking, it's not that I don't know what happens in my unwritten Chapter Two. Three major characters get in a carriage and journey across the country. I just so far haven't imagined anything interesting or important enough to constitute a scene. And if I don't think of anything soon, I'll just pick up on their arrival in Gloucestershire with a throwaway line or two about the journey being uneventful.

I get these people in my head, and start picturing how they'd interact, but not always in any chronological order.

Exactly. I knew (and I wrote) the big fight in which Nora left Neil. I don't know how much more I'll have to write before she's emotionally ready for that fight. Right now it's floating out there in the air, waiting for the scenes that will connect it to the beginning.

People who don't write in order are a mystery to me. I start at the beginning with an ending vaguely in sight and a sketched map on a damp cocktail napkin... and if it turns out, in chapter 11, that chapter 5 will have to be completely rewritten, then so be it. I'll fix it in the revisions phase. On to chapter 12.

Just to throw down with sequentialist solidarity.

I'm mostly a sequentialist, too. I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

People who write in order confuse me. *g*

I'm trying it this once. It's interesting.

I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. Oh gods yes.

(I will write chronologically, I will write chronologically, I will write chronologically...)

(Boggling at trying to develop personalities, storyline and plot, in pieces)

Of course, I have no math in me, which almost certainly contributes to that little issue.

OTOH, I finished rewriting Still Life. Bev, do you want to wait for a PDF, or shall I send an atatched word doc? And same for Anne, whom I believe also wanted to read it?

Attached word doc is great (Especially since I'll be here to get it, yay!).

Oh. And silly me, WooHoo you, for finishing it! You are the hardest-working woman I know.

I have a bad problem that once I've imagined a scene, that's the way it played, it's history set in stone from then on. I write out of order, get a better idea and then I'm having to seriously retcon or get so bollixed up I can't go forward....

I've just accepted the fact I'm going to have to do major continuity edits once I'm done. I really couldn't write any other way. I tried, and I never even came close to finishing everything. From the time I was fifteen or sixteen on, I've accumulated stacks of Chapters 1-3. Once I even got as far as Chapter Five. But never anything close to 65,000 words.

The hardest part of writing out of order for my current project is that it's all about the coming of age of my first-person narrator. Having settled into Lucy's woman-voice, it takes some mental readjustment to go back to her maiden-voice when I write earlier scenes.