Maps e.g., etc.

Posted by 22111
Jun 15, 2022 at 10:06 AM

Linear writing vs. Erratic writing

Linear writing: which follows in the “work” is determined what precedes it (or you will have to throw away large parts of your “work” in case)

Erratic writing: as before, but also, “earlier” things are determined by “later” things, “earlier” and “later” meaning “by page count”, “in your “work”“, not necessarily (but most of the time, more or less…) also by plot’s chronology

More gifted writers may much more have (among other things) what I’d call the “presence of the opportunities”, i.e. they might “know” quite early the respective list of “options” for the “plot developments”, on the “macro level” - by which I mean additional or alternative “details”, but which may deeply affect the further “goings” / developments. Therefore, their decisions which are the respective “alternatives” to follow might be better “weighted”, which means that after writing another 30 or 100 pages, they will only rarely then discover new “alternatives” which would then make their “work” much “better”... but while invalidating 80 p.c. of what the will have written in-between…

Also, people really and more or less “writing by (their own) numbers” will probably have some “schema” and don’t deviate from that anyway, even if they’ve get further “inspiration” for “things already set”: a question of “good-enough quality”, and their alleged reaction to such after-thoughts: “I have to do a certain output, quantity-wise, and I’ll do it better next time, will develop something that idea then, will not integrate it in here, since that would me cost “n” days / weeks of work.

Writers who sit for years, working on one novel, see this differently, obviously: They are ready to throw away parts of their work in order to optimize the final output… and it’s obvious that those writers would be interested in having to throw away the strict minimum, too, so “erratic” working, not linear working, might be the best way of working, for them.

Above, I have presented the idea that “pantsers” and “outliners” (in the traditional sense for “outline”) do the same thing, at the end of the day: They are both “linear writers”, they both are BOUND what they will have written before, at any given moment, unless they are willing to throw away large parts of what they will already have written, it’s just that the “pantser” writes, and “sees where it goes”, whilst the “outliner” tries to foresee such “I took the bad junction” problems, and tries to hopefully eliminate them, by “outlining”, i.e. by early discovering the respective consequences, from the structure, without investing too much detail work which then would be invalidated but unwanted ramifications: They try to be “efficient”... and they fall for the same fallacy as do “forced outliners” do in school:

It’s in (later-on) details that you see the (preceding) outline’s misses and “errors”. (This is obviously very different in most technical and legal writing, where you will have “given frameworks” for any “situation”, which will then, at the most (i.e. if ever), present some “specifics”, “frameworks with minor variations” that is.

Whilst literary writing has NO such framework, or at least should not have, and sometimes, I’m amused by the self-concept of IT professionals who see themselves as “software architects” - I know what they mean, of course: they are the “planners”, within a given framework, e.g. it’s the “system analysts” who build a certain framework, from their analysis of (organizational) reality (be that in administration, in finance (banks), in manufactory…), and then they plan the technical realization: They are proud to do the higher-up work, above the (“mechanical”, subordinate) “coding”... but just as most (original) “architects” (in civil engineering), they are engineers indeed, they work within a given framework, and very rare are those who invent something (“something new” would be a pleonasm).

Now what the French call “littérature de gare” ou “roman de (hall de) gare”, here again the English do it short-and-crisp (and that’s a tautology, a literary device): pulp, or pulp fiction… and sometimes, some author has such an output that you ain’t so sure what to think about that output: should you dare defame it, or just accept the author is very much gifted indeed? (You encounter the same - there not so rare - phenomenon in music, I mean on the composers’ side of course…)

Thus, I use an “extended outliner” (i.e. the kind that gives access to the outline AND any “level” of real detail (“body text”), the only species that has survived as a software tool - and as explained above, for good reason!), in order to do “erratic writing”... but if “you” are highly gifted, or then would want to write by numbers (nobody here would want that, right? of course!), you might do linear writing indeed…

But of course, when I read some “high professional”‘s interview where they say they had away to throw away 3 or 4 times the final page count of their published work, in the process, I ineluctably wonder if their alleged linear, or traditional “outlined” writing (which would not be any other than more or less linear writing indeed, following (“waterfall”) their outlining, i.e. their - individual here - “numbers”), if their traditional writing methods, beyond giving them some feel of “security” allegedly, are really their very best choice indeed?

Ok, some (highly or then less gifted) writers need a lot of “hard work”, so that the final product can emerge in the end, they “need” their more or less completed errancies (“drain the cup”?), but then:

I never have “inspiration” in front of a screen, or hunched above a sheet of paper, so perhaps for other people, that sought way of doings things isn’t that ideal either, after all?

Above, I said (/implied) I take audio notes, in order to not lose ideas (anymore), speaking much faster than writing (or then, I couldn’t decipher those scribbles anymore), but it goes without saying that there are also lots of situations where writing wouldn’t be realistic: in your car for example (they lately criminalized this “all over” Europe, so you have to take measures against their cameras…), or then in bed, simply because turning on a light and jotting down some notes wouldn’t be impossible, you’re deadbeat… but even then, taking some audio notes is possible, not even opening your eyes, but the device faithfully waiting under your pillow, and safely guiding you with its specific beeps in the dark.

And, obviously, above, when I spoke of regular, bold, and blue tree entries, I meant “data”, “material”, for “work” / output I use all the 8 tree entry formats (“flags”) I had spoken of previously; similarly, when I use a somewhat deeper hierarchy than explained above (project, scenes*), that’s just for navigational purposes, my (“landscape”) screen visualizing some 45 list entries concurrently, not more, and including “comment” entries, so you need “chapters” (or whatever you call them) in order to avoid “endless” scrolling, and, as said, I also like to put “data”, “material” “where it belongs”, and that, in some cases, may then take another 1-2 indentation level, so then some “material” might be at level 5, but that’s rare: It’s the listing, and the flat hierarchizing capabilities of modern software that tremendously helps in organizing your things - as for inspiration, you should look elsewhere, i.e. into facilitating life situations: the computer - Mac or PC! - is an organizational device, one that makes your “piles of sheets” manageable - nothing more (and thus, “Musings on tools for thought” are more or less wishful thinking), but then, even at that task, most tools fail quite largely, from what I see.

MS Word, together with add-ins then (!), seems to be the “best” writing tool if you need intra-linking, simply because the (regularly 1-seat) developers of what we call “outliners” don’t have the means to implement the necessary code, but yes, as I see it, the foremost element of the - here ever recurring! - subject of “distraction-free” would not be the masking of buttons / menus / etc., but would have been the automatic hiding of the body text before, and after, the body text you’re writing on, which is NOT of course, a single line, but the body text between the previous and the next (sub-) heading - today, in order to achieve that, you will (as far as I see it) need to use an “outliner”, since none (?) of today’s “text processors” provide that functionality, with all their navigational functions (headings, etc. in an additional tree view) they may added in-between.