Creating a Whole from Bits and Pieces
When we approach a story, a book, a poem, whatever we’re writing, maybe some part of us expects it to flow out in a cohesive stream. A narrative. Unless we have experienced the magical way disparate bits and pieces assemble themselves, we anticipate the story will be linear, logical, formed from birth.
Is this how you think about your writing? Feel you’re in a forest of bits and pieces? You can’t see a cohesive whole?
If you come from an oral storytelling tradition, you’re used to a certain flow in how stories emerge. But if you’re like this reader, you’ll feel you’re in a huge mess.
“I like what I have written,” she told me, “but I don’t know how to organize it at this point. I’m just in the flow of writing, and I can’t imagine how it will all come together.”
Is it okay to start with bits and pieces? Absolutely. Do published writers work this way? Most definitely, many of us do. Some plan ahead of writing, but many are flow writers and just know more work is ahead, to make sense of the mess.
Two kinds of writing: flow and structure
It’s helpful to realize that there are two parts to the creative self. One is random, a kind of “flow mode.” The other is all about structure. Rarely do the two work together in the same moment, because they are, as I understand it, coming from different parts of the brain.
Most of us love the random flow of creativity when ideas come forward so fast and so abundantly we can hardly keep track of them. When I’m tapped into this flow, I am in love with my story idea and how it’s manifesting. I’ve trained myself to let it be, let the ideas come, because it’s an exciting and intensely valuable part of the writing process. I’ve also trained myself to know there’s more work ahead, using the other aspect of structure.
If you only love the bits and pieces you are producing, you’ll need to remind yourself that there’s also a linear side of you that will want your story all to look like Something Good or Something That Makes Sense. Also necessary, but timing is everything.
A time-honored struggle between the two creative sides of ourselves, the trick to surviving the conflict is to acknowledge both as useful, and know when to switch.
Make sense of the mess
There’s a critical mass moment with flow writing where it starts to become unmanageable. It might be amount of time put in, for you. Or it might be number of words written.
Usually, for me, at about 30,000 words or 100 pages of a book manuscript, I get an itchy feeling that there is too much mess, and it’s time for some structuring.
You need to give yourself a break, first. Let your flow self rest and allow the linear part of your creative brain to come forward. I usually need to take a walk, take a nap, read some favorite author’s work, read a couple of poems. Anything you can do to create that switch in a comfortable way.
Then it’s time to choose a structure tool. My favorite is the storyboard.
Creating a basic storyboard
Used in film production, a storyboard is like a giant grid or a series of blank cartoon boxes waiting to be filled. You use the storyboard to begin to see what’s workable in the mess of flow writing. It will help you sift out redundancies and find the gold in what’s come through your random brain.
Here’s how I begin.
See if you can read your bits and pieces and give a title to about 10 individual sections. You may find these are scenes or partial scenes, a character’s backstory, a description of a setting.
Once you have 10 of these sections titled, see if there are any more. Look for individual moments. Starting with 10 is a nonthreatening way to get your feet wet in the structure world, if you will. If you can, title all the sections of your flow writing that you think might be included in your manuscript. That work somehow. You may not know how yet.
Take a bunch of index cards or Post-it notes and write one title on each. Spread them on a table so you can see them all.
Begin to arrange them in a logical order, if you can. Which one might you start with? Where does that logically lead?
If you find you’re missing pieces, write a new Post-it or index card with that title or a brief note about what needs to be added to fill the gap. Do this on a different color of Post-it note or with a different colored pen so you can later tell what you’ve written and what’s still to be written.
The calming—and discouraging—effect of structure
The goal with structure is to calm and organize, not dampen the creativity. As you write down what you have, as you note what you’re missing, you may begin to feel discouraged. What felt so fun and flowy was really a mess, not a book. But you’re wrong—the flow is equally important to the organizing.
Why? Because in the flow, the inner story emerges. The theme and metaphor emerges. The stuff that your linear brain can’t produce.
Your very basic storyboard is just a roadmap for you to enter the flow writing again, but this time you’ll have a topic, a missing scene, a piece that needs to be added. It may not feel as exciting and free. But it’s real. It’s a real part of the book-writing process, and if you want a story that other people can enter and enjoy, it’s necessary.
Structure can also calm that frustrated part of you that wants to see progress and order in your book writing journey.
Your weekly writing exercise
Try the basic storyboard, detailed above, with a scene or chapter or your flow writing so far. See if you can get some sense of the value of structure.
Then see if you can take a missing piece and write to it. Do you feel the flow again?
Share your thoughts and questions!Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash