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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 s
by jsomers 16y ago
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?
- barkingcat 16y agoYes, 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.