Any Novel’s Negative Twenty Questions

philipgraham.net

35 points·santadays··5 comments

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.

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?

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.

So you're saying that when it comes to novels, waterfall produces more coherent results than agile methodologies?

I think the spiral model is generally advocated - back of the book, plot summary, chapter outlines, chapters.

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