Just wondering if anyone else done this. I was recently stuck in my current WIP and decided to write a few other chapters so I could continue my WIP. Now I'm seriously worried that I may have lost the flow of the storyline even though the story itself has not changed. For those who have done this, how easy was it for you to get everything to gel again. In going back to the chapters that you skipped, did you see elements of the story changing? Now that I am trying to go back to the part that I omitted, I find it hard to stick with the original storyline. I'm itching to make changes to the story by adding a new character but I foresee a change in dynamics of all my other characters, which will ultimately force me to make more changes! Lesson learned from this: Don't skip.
Sure, I skip chapters if I'm really feeling enthusiastic about getting a specific chapter down on paper.
I've skipped ahead on occasion, but I find that when I do, then go back, when I get to the later chapters, the characters sometimes have changed in subtle ways and the later chapters need revision. So, I try not to skip ahead.
I think this is my problem as well. So now I have to wait till the next chapter comes to me. Otherwise, I'd be doing a lot of rewriting. How have you been by the way?
I bounce around a ton. I go where my energy is when it comes to determining which scene to write. It means a lot of work in the second draft getting it all straightened out and consistent, but creatively it's what personally works best for me.
Whenever I get stuck, I turn to outlining, looking at the bigger picture so I know more about what's about to happen so I can deal with the scene at hand. Like now. I'm stuck trying to work out how the first act blends into the second. I started an Excel file to follow the various threads of the story so I can figure out how they keep crossing and recrossing. Hopefully, from all that, I'll be able to see how those threads are supposed to cross in the current scene and sort out why I'm stuck. Hopefully. But to address your situation head on, what I do in that situation is go back to the beginning and read. Read until I get the flow of the story again, then (if I've got an idea of where that scene I skipped is supposed to go) dive back in. Hope this helps.
I skipped once because I was getting bored with a scene, it was going nowhere, so I started writing a later part of the story I enjoyed more. It ended up coming across as very disjointed, like it wasn't part of the plot at all. Never again. I don't know, it's just my style, I need characters reacting to things as they happen; I can't tell how they will react in the future until that future comes.
My five cents: I have done skipping once or twice. Neither of these scenes I wrote out of order will end up in my WIP - but I didn't know that at the time of writing them. I honestly thought I was writing my storyline. But the fact was, that through the process of writing them my backbrain got disengaged from the problem it had at the current point (where it got stuck and from where I skipped forward) .. and ultimately found a new path out of this troubled spot. And then, of course, the old storyline rearranged itself. So I do not regret having written these scenes. Not when I see where it got me - with an ultimately stronger storyline.
