Are you a slider or a hopper?

[Bluma Bezbroda]

I took the liberty of using a bit of scientific jargon because it serves well the question I want to ask you. A sliding protein will attach to and slide along a polymer (usually DNA) and in this fashion move from point A to point B, and eventually to Z when it can stop and deattach. A hopping one wil attach and deattach at different points untill it's work its done at all these locations.



In the same manner, you can writre starting from chapter one and then consequently work yourself through the whole story up to the finish line. Since I tend to be super-disorganised and messy, I adopted this method for "Kusjes" as a way to orce myself to bring the project to the end while giving each part of it satisfactory standard. It has great advantages, mostly for my own discipline. But one has to be honest- in my case it is not so much "sliding" forward as "slowly and laboriously pushing yourself from page 1 to page 1,5".

For my other project, that I officially hadn't started yet I became a hopper. I'm writing down snippets, dialogue, impressions that I find the most vivid and alive in my mind. Then I save them in appropriate folders (the number of which is getting alarmingly big), assuming that I'll fill the gaps and connect them in a consistent story later on. I don't think I have to spell out the dangers of such a system here

So, sliders or hoppers?

 

[Patricia D]

I have been a slider for four books but am trying out the hopper approach on the one I'm just starting. Someone has suggested Scrivener as a way of organizing the snippets. My folders, like Bluma's, are multiplying lie rabbits. Has anyone here used it?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I do a combination of both techniques. In my WIP I know what I'll write in the next chapter and the one after that, but am unsure quite where I'm going with the current chapter. Like you, I jot down ideas, phrases to use and notes on the mood I want a particular scene to convey + tons of site addresses for verifying information.

I tend to use a slider method of writing, moving from one chapter to another sequentially, though I've sometimes altered the order afterward for better effect. I like the idea of writing the first chapter last, or rather rewriting it, as once the bulk of the story is told it's a great way of introducing themes to the reader who is entering the world you've created.

A different way of doing things is the Cut-Up Technique. In this, found dialogue and text are cut-up and rearranged to form the basis of a story. It was much used by William Burroughs, David Bowie and Radiohead.

 

[Boopadoo]

I am a hopper who slides until I find a need to hop back or forward, based on either a need to check and/or fix continuity or a desire to get down a really cool idea that won't work until later in the story or makes a previous scene better.

I used to be a straight-up slider, but that was before I learned how to write well (that is, before I discovered Litopia...). Those novels aren't so good and would need lots of fixing to be ready for public consumption.

 

[Sea-shore]

I have been a slider for four books but am trying out the hopper approach on the one I'm just starting. Someone has suggested Scrivener as a way of organizing the snippets. My folders, like Bluma's, are multiplying lie rabbits. Has anyone here used it?

Hopper with some sliding. I use Scrivener. It's excellent and perfect for shifting chapters around: just click and drag. (I still have many multiple files though. )

 

[Carol Rose]

Since I write in a character-driven genre, I have to write the story in a linear fashion from start to finish, or I wind up not getting the character arc the way I want it. They grow and change throughout the story. If I wrote snippets here and there, I'd only have to go back and layer in their personalities when I got to that scene anyway, to show their growth. So to write them that way would make extra work for me, and risk not showing an appropriate point in the character or story arc at all in those places.

Occasionally I will make a sketchy outline of a scene that I know is in the future, but it's only quick notes or bullet points that I don't want to forget. If the story has many threads to resolve by the end, I will make a list of things that have to be concluded by the time I get to the last scene. I use those lists or sketchy outlines as placeholders for their appropriate places in the story, but they're never full scenes.

 

[KG Christopher]

Looking good @Sea-shore.

I am a 'petra dish'. I usually start off with the germ of an idea and build scenarios, scenes around these. Then, after a number of iterations, I tend to have scenes that are very vivid and anchor a story. It's usually after a period of jumping from scene to scene (or chapter to chapter?) I get a 'Eureka' moment where I have a plot line built and I can go into 'slider' mode.

The whole of my Pet Food stories rose out of one casual conversation I had with my children on a walk about 8 years ago, scenarios where built up, torn down and tried and tested. It was only in the last 2 years that I finally got a reasonable plot line going.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I'm mostly a slider, though I started out as a hopper. But I found that by the time I got to the bits I'd already written, the story had changed, and I had to rewrite them (or throw them out entirely). So I force myself to slide, now. I will hop ahead a scene or two if I'm stuck on one, but no further. I use Scrivener, and love it for the organisation it allows me--every scene in a separate file, but all of them organised and easy to access, and linked to my research documents. Makes it super easy to shift things around. It took me a while to remember to make each scene separate, but it works a treat, now I know how to use it to my advantage.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I will add that I'm a planner--I'll block out scenes, and do a lot of scribbling of notes way in advance of where I'm writing, but I won't let myself actually write the scene until I get there. Helps me get through the tough bits, knowing I've got this perfect scene I'm dying to write...

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

This is and will be my problem- there are scenes I love and can't wait to write down, but by the time I'm done with the "fillers" I am often so disaffected that I don't have the soul for it any more...

 

[Robinne Weiss]

This is and will be my problem- there are scenes I love and can't wait to write down, but by the time I'm done with the "fillers" I am often so disaffected that I don't have the soul for it any more...

One of the reasons I enjoy writing short stories!

 

[Sea-shore]

Thanks @KG Christopher. Heh heh, Petri dish.

Come to think about it, my second manuscript 'Pirates' Rebellion' was all sliding as the characters had to get to know each other and develop. (…what Carol said re character-driven plot)

My current WIP has more set scenes/ defined chapters so I do the exciting ones or which ever one I like first as I know it's all going to be edited big time anyway.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I slide but hopping gets saved into a Dump File. Sometimes I fish it out again.

 

[Chase Gamwell]

I slide...or try to, but sometimes things get terribly muddy as I move forward. Usually, I'll start with an outline, with the express purpose of treading along the outline in lockstep until the work is done, but that's seldom ever the case. For instance, I've been sliding along in my current work (the cyberpunk thriller), but things keep changing as I do. I started with a "general outline", then wrote it into a 15 page "exhaustive outline", but am still having trouble following it. As @Carol Rose recently found out, characters have a tendency to go where they like, regardless of our plans for them. My current MC is doing the same. Though the story is following many of the same high level beats, things have been changing drastically from chapter to chapter. I have a specific idea of where I want to go with the story (plot points, character deaths, etc), but I'm starting to see that this story is NOT going to end up where I'd like it to. My characters are kicking and screaming as I drag them in the wrong direction, so much so, that I just had to rewrite a chapter - into three new ones.

So I'm not really sure what that classifies me as. A slider? A hopper? Could this be the "string theory" approach to writing? Starting with a specific universe in mind with the writing flowing to the universe it sees fit to reside in?

I have no clue...

 

[Patricia D]

Since I write in a character-driven genre, I have to write the story in a linear fashion from start to finish, or I wind up not getting the character arc the way I want it. They grow and change throughout the story. If I wrote snippets here and there, I'd only have to go back and layer in their personalities when I got to that scene anyway, to show their growth. So to write them that way would make extra work for me, and risk not showing an appropriate point in the character or story arc at all in those places.

Occasionally I will make a sketchy outline of a scene that I know is in the future, but it's only quick notes or bullet points that I don't want to forget. If the story has many threads to resolve by the end, I will make a list of things that have to be concluded by the time I get to the last scene. I use those lists or sketchy outlines as placeholders for their appropriate places in the story, but they're never full scenes.

So true about the characters - and sometimes I have to go back and change something because the character has evolved in a different direction than I'd first envisioned.