I'm sure methods are unique to the person, but I personally am thinking of writing my next book starting with the first couple chapters and then diving into scenes that I can visualize well. (Ex: writing cp 1-3 and then skipping around to 11 or 18 depending on what is most clear, vivid, inspired by, etc) It seemed to work well for me in my last book, but then I also felt this could hurt other chapters in between because you would be working your way around a single chapter until you hit that chapter. It could help that single chapter and then harm the rest of the "filler" betwixt. Of course, there are methods to do this without doing that I'm sure. Are there any that anyone knows of? Guidelines to follow to make sure every single scene is packed with meaningfulness without being filler?
I am not able to give any helpful advice for this situation, but if it works for you, then that's great! I personally cannot write out of order. I can imagine scenes that will happen later, but I have to wait until I reach that scene in order to finally write it. I may write down notes, though. The reason why this is not doable for me is because, if I don't write chronologically, I miss out on opportunities to have scenes develop organically, and I also would miss out on character development. Characters can change a lot between chapter 3 and chapter 18, and that change also needs to be "organic". So I have to slog my way through what may be "filler" before I can reach scenes that I'm looking forward to. But in the process, I end up coming up with new scene ideas and new directions and characters that I never would have considered if I had written out of order.
I think the simplest way to go about this is just to consider whether your story would be impacted if you took the scene in question out entirely. If not, it's clearly filler. Then look at what aspects of it could be taken out withing negatively impacting the story, and see what adjusting can be done. Just don't confuse things like character development and worldbuilding and atmosphere with filler -- not everything has to directly serve the plot, but everything should be able to justify its existence in some way or another (ideally, in multiple ways at once).
Sometimes I need to write filler to keep myself going until the next juicy bit. Until I have the whole story written down, I don't always know what's important and what isn't. I trim off the excess in subsequent rewrites. If I wrote out of order, I imagine that I would edit the following drafts chronologically.
I know what you mean! I am currently working on a story that doesn't rely a lot on action/violence for its source of drama, so there are a lot of slower scenes. But I can't just be jumping from one "exciting"/dramatic scene to the next without some sort of "filler", otherwise it wouldn't feel realistic.
This is the problem I'm currently having. Right now, I have a book where some chapters are just downright impeccable, and then others are, well, less so. I'm worried that if I leave these "filler" (Yes the chapters do worldbuild, serve narrative purpose, introduce plot mechanics, etc) that cleaning up after the initial run through will be downright hell. I mainly say this because I've been editing another book I finished, and while it's really good, editing it is... Longer than actually writing it, I would rather not have that process be lengthier than it already is lol. And thanks for your reply!
I completely agree with @BlitzGirl and suggest that instead of writing the scenes out of order, you instead just note down the parts that you can visualise so well. I often jot down dialogue that springs into my head for a scene I haven't reached yet, or a detailed idea for it, then actually mould that into a proper scene when I get there. It always requires me to tweak my initial idea because of what's happened in between, so I'm glad I write chronologically. But you do mention that you've tried writing things out of order before and it's worked for you, so in the end, it's all about what you're most comfortable with. As for making sure a scene isn't just a filler, ask yourself what progress has been made in it. Plot progress? Character progress? Or maybe no character has progressed, but it's shined a light on another aspect of them. In addition, I sometimes ask myself these two questions when considering the events for a scene: what questions will the readers be asking after reading it? (Questions keep readers turning pages!) And what questions (that I've raised in previous scenes) have been answered for them?
I'd say the problem is in thinking of anything in your book as filler. If you think about anything as filler it'll read as filler. You need to take a step back and look more at each scene for the purpose it actually serves in the book, both for action and connecting scenes. As yourself why you need each scene in, why it needs to have these beats in it and why it's worth your readers time. When you can think about your writing in this way then you'll write more efficiently simply because you're writing what needs to be there, which is where your writing should be IMHO. It'll massively decrease the editing you need to do, it'll hugely improve your pacing and it'll keep the book flowing well, the latter two being some of the hardest things to change after the fact. I've had to learn this stuff the hard way. I don't plan my writing, and I over-write a lot too, and that's left me cutting 150k words out of books before. And it's hard and it's slow and it's really inefficient. I think the end products are eventually very good but it's not great to work through. Like the OP I tend to see these big intense moments that I want to build a story around, but I had to learn to tamp that down and strive to avoid writing 'filler' to string them together. I've ended up more thinking in straight lines, using the motivation of the big exciting scenes to push me through the connecting parts. I really want to write that heartrending scene so I use that to make sure I've set everything up properly first, that I've included the character moments needed to build them up right and then finally pay them off. And no, it's not easy. But writing is a marathon. Being more disciplined about it, and forcing yourself to write in a straight line instead of connecting the dots makes a big difference in the end.
If it feels like a "filler" then it doesn't belong at all. For example, if you have a plot where John goes to the movies and witnesses an actual murder in the cinema, then goes to talk to his friend Bob about it, you don't really need to include the whole thing in the book. You don't need to describe how John took the bus from his house to the cinema, then spent fifteen minutes eating popcorn and deciding which movie to watch. You can start with John witnessing the murder in the middle of the movie. Or, you can even skip all that and start with John talking to Bob about the murder. And in that conversation you can include lots of detail or only a few teeny bits of info, depending on what the plot needs. No filler needed.
