Here’s the scenario:
You want to write a novel. You’ve made an outline or you have a fairly strong vision for your story. You’re ready to dive in and write your first draft.
You begin to write, but for any number of reasons (known or unknown) you just can’t seem to get on a roll. You keep rewriting the beginning, never progressing past the first chapter (or first paragraph!). Maybe you’ve abandoned your draft completely (although you still can’t get it out of your mind). Maybe the previous scenarios actually sound relatively successful to you—because you can’t start writing at all!
While there are more ways than one to shake yourself into action—and please run with any tactic that you find works for you! —the one that works best for me is something I call the Zig Zag approach. (I chat about it quite a lot in my fiction writing guide The One Week Writing Workshop.)
Basically, to Zig Zag means rather than forcing yourself to flow through your draft by writing beginning, middle, end in order, you give yourself permission to jump around, writing scenes in any order you wish, using your instincts (or just what you feel like that day!) to help you choose. This is after all a first draft—you can work at harmonizing everything to make sure it works as a whole in the revision process. You can expect to do a lot of “harmonizing” regardless of whether you write scenes in order or out of order, so if zig zagging helps you get through, why not give it a shot?
Zig Zagging and Creative Writing Prompts
As I said above, you can use your instincts to guide you when it comes to deciding which scenes to write as you zig zag. But you can also make use of your outline, storyboard, or story notes and essentially turn them into personal creative writing prompts to spark your zig zag adventure.
Why would you do this? Well, for one thing you might find it really fun, energizing your writing sessions by turning them into a sort of game. (Never undersestimate the value of fun when you’re looking for momentum!) But beyond the fun-factor, I find that it’s a great remedy when you’re stuck-beyond-stuck…so stuck that you can’t even rely on your instincts to tell you what to do next.
So don’t rely on your instincts—rely on your prompts!
How to Make Your Writing Prompts and Get Going!
You’ll need two copies of your outline: one to keep intact to use as a checklist, and one to cut up into prompts that you’ll pick at random. I highly recommend that you make at least the second copy a physical/paper one so that you can cut it up (yes, with scissors!!) into separate strips.
Now, I’m aware that there are a multitude of outline styles writers use. You might have made anything ranging from an extensive scene list, to a storyboard composed of sticky notes, to a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, or you simply have a series of jottings in a notebook. The key here is to break out the smaller moments captured in your outline so that you can scramble them up and pick them at random.
If you can’t literally copy your outline and cut it up into reasonable prompts (like you can if your outline is an orderly scene list), take the time to jot down as many distinct scenes or moments suggest by your outline as possible. If this sounds like a lot of work, remember that it’s another chance to flow through your story in your mind—and if you’re stuck and unable to write your draft anyway, this will be all the more valuable!
If you don’t have a complete outline or you’re a by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of writer who never outlines, you can still make your own writing prompts. Just use your unfinished outline or jot down a list of as many scenes/moments already swimming around in your imagination. (It’s enough to get you going, and that’s way more than half the battle!)
Once you have your prompts written out on strips of paper, scramble them in a box…and give them all the control. At each writing session, draw out one prompt from the box and write that scene. Will it be rough?—sure! But this is a draft, and rough is infinitely better than a blank page or taunting blinking cursor!. When you have a (rough) scene, mark it off on the “checklist” version of your outline. The act of giving yourself a checkmark will itself prompt momentum!
Do this until you get through your writing prompts. Or…feel free to jump back into an orderly flow if you get inspired! This happens frequently, and is a huge benefit of the Zig Zag approach.
Opting to zig zag (by instincts or with physical prompts) rather than force flow is a simple switch. But so often we get caught up in how we think we should be writing (in order) that we forget that our story is entirely in our hands, including how we write it!
That being said, zig zagging with prompts isn’t for everyone. In fact, outlining isn’t for everyone (for a non-outline take on zig zagging, see my post called Make Daydreaming Your Writing Superpower). I get it! But what I can tell you is that zig zagging has worked wonders for me on more than one occasion. And quite often—maybe even more often than not—zig zagging for a bit restores a state of flow, and you can go back to writing your draft in order. Even if it doesn’t get you back into flow, it’s certainly better to be moving back and forth than to not be moving at all.
