

Any Novel’s Negative Twenty Questions - santadays
http://www.philipgraham.net/2010/02/any-novels-negative-twenty-questions/

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wccrawford
An interesting way to look at writing novels, but I far prefer the novels that
have the plot worked out before the writing starts. I can always tell these
because everything integrates so well with everything else and it feels whole.

Novels that 'start on page 1 and slog through to the end' usually read the
same way. They ramble and they get lost and eventually find some kind of
ending.

Novels that start somewhere, then work out different pieces until there's a
whole novel would seem to be in the same category for the reader, but probably
more fun for the writer.

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jsomers
I'm skeptical that one can tell which novels were plotted out beforehand just
by sensing how neatly they're integrated. Isn't it possible (indeed likely)
that someone who wrote in a piecemeal jumpy fashion also pays careful
attention to consistency?

Wasn't that in fact the author's point with his "negative twenty questions"
analogy, that novelists who write in that piecemeal jumpy way nevertheless
achieve coherence through careful attention to their constraints?

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barkingcat
Yes, the best novelists make it seem like everything is coherent and
constructed intricately beforehand, but you would be sorely deluded if you
think writers engineer the plot, and connect the pieces in an integrated
fashion before writing process.

It just doesn't work like that. The novel that appears to have the plot
thought all the way through, presenting an integrated and unified story-world
is a refined work that went through hundreds of revisions and constant
rewriting to make it the whole that it appears to be.

