Need Advice

Hi,

I’m Rue. I’m trying to figure out the best way to write my book Letters from an Angel. Forewarning, I’m a chaotic pantser-plantser type of writer. I want to write this book, post it online (and maybe get it published on Amazon), but the problem is I lose motivation too easily if I write in direct chronological order (or the book becomes too chaotic for my taste). One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to get a book finished, so any advice is welcome.

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There’s nothing wrong with writing out of order if writing chronologically doesn’t work for you.

That’s something I’ve been grappling with a lot lately :'D and I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that writing out of order produces my best writing and ensures I’m writing more consistently, even if it means I can’t post my stories on Wattpad anytime soon.

So my advice would be to embrace it, write whatever scenes you have envisioned/excitement for now, and fill in the gaps later. Filling in the gaps can be kind of tedious sometimes, but I discovered that finding ways to introduce irony, parallels, or foreshadowing into the gaps can be really fun and also makes me feel gleefully-evil as the author xD and it makes it much easier to get through.

Not sure if this is helpful or what you were looking for. Either way, I wish you the best! Good luck :star2:

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Seconding what Tori said.
I write almost everything out of order, and it’s actually a fun puzzle to fit all the end pieces together and glue in the gaps. It’s definitely possible, and if you can’t write chronologically, you don’t have to force it! You can come back to the struggle areas later, and skip ahead to parts you can see very clearly. It’ll all come together in the end.

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Frankly, you don’t have to post a book in linear order, as long as you make clear what time jumps there are. It’s just harder on casual readers is all.

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If you don’t want to write it in chronological irder and you are a chaotic type of pantser, I reccomend an epistolary approach. It even has Letters in the title!

https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-epistolary-novel

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Writing in chronological order is the standard, sort of default way of writing, but it isn’t the only option. There are many who write out of order, and a good amount of those writers are also successful with it.

The only reason why chronological order is a good way of writing for most isn’t only because it’s organized, but you become excited to write later scenes so you don’t really get bored, because when people write out of order, they write the great and exciting scenes first and leave the boring stuff last, and to most I’ve talked to who do this end up getting bored with the story… even to a point where they quit writing it. :woman_shrugging:

But if you’d rather write a story out of order, that’s perfectly fine. However, it does sound like you’ve never finished a story before (as you said you want to get a book finished—I’m only assuming) and it also sounds like you’ve also used the out-of-order style (again, assuming as you’ve said you write chaotically, etc.) so you may need a different approach to it. You could plan out the whole book (doesn’t have to be detailed or anything, just simple sentences that describes the biggest parts of each scene/chapter if that’s all you need) and use this as a way to stay organized with your scenes so they don’t become chaotic.

Jenna Moreci has a video where she talks about how to create an outline using a poster board and sticky notes and it seems like a great way to outline when you have major plot points that you can place in a line and can write your story out of order while still being organized and knowing what happens.

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Actually, I have. 4 original books + multiple fanfics:

Originals:

  1. Letters from an Angel (2019 — 2020) | original draft.
  2. Wing Girl for Prince Charming (2018 — 2019)
  3. Project Hybrid (2016 — 2017)
  4. Girl of Time (2016?)

Fanfics:

  1. Not Normal
  2. Not Normal 2
  3. Not Normal 3
  4. Once Upon A Fangirl (2014)
  5. Was No Whirlwind (2014 — 2015)
  6. They’re Trouble (2015)
  7. Halfway to Happily Ever After (2015)
  8. A Heart Like Yours (2014?)
  9. Eternal (? it could be Everlasting)
  10. Young and Forever ( 2015?)
  11. First Love (2015?)
  12. Let it be Forever (2015?)
  13. English University (2015?)
  14. Summer Without You (2017)
  15. Be My Hope (2016?)
  16. Disney Rebels (2015? I don’t know I wrote one draft and then rewrote it — stopped at a certain scene and took it down. And went down rewriting at 10 times).

There could be more. The actual how is the word count:

I wrote short chapters and not a lot of chapters. Now, I write long chapters and many chapters.

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