Trying New Ways of Writing

I'm working on a new novel (not one of The Steam and Steel Chronicles novellas—don't worry, I'm still working on the series and still plan on keeping with the original publishing schedule), and am trying some slightly different writing methods. In the past, I've always been a very linear writer: I start at the beginning and I end up at the end. Only once have I written out of order, but even then I just wrote the last two scenes, and then started at the beginning and wrote straight through.

This time I'm trying something different. I've got the first three chapters done, but beyond that I've just been writing scenes as I think of them. I have a rough outline for what should be the first half of the book (which may or may not be a two- or three-book series, I haven't gotten that far yet), and I'm just kind of writing scenes as I feel like writing them. The plan is to get all the scenes in the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book written, and then revise them into the correct order and write straight through to the end of the book from there.

I'm still, to some extent, writing linearly. I'll write three or four scenes in order, and then move to another block of scenes. I'm also keeping a spreadsheet with the scene number (for identification purposes only, not the final order they'll be in), a one-line synopsis of what happens in that scene, who's in the scene, the setting, the word count, and what needs to come before and after that scene (which might be events, or might be other scene numbers). This way I know exactly what I've written, and what I still need to write.

In just over 10 days, I've got over 17,000 words finished (so, basically I'm writing at a NaNoWriMo pace). I know that I'll need to do a lot of editing for all my usual things (repetitive words and lack of description are my two biggest first-draft weaknesses) during the revision process, but I'm hoping I can do a one-pass revision on this one. (See Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision method for what I'm talking about.)

Now that I know I can finish a novel (I've finished six novels and two novellas), I'm finding it interesting to experiment with different methods of writing. Maybe at some point I'll find one that makes me a faster and/or better writer. So far, this method does seem to make me faster, and I've been able to produce a lot of words despite all the other work I'm doing at the moment. This is a really good feeling.

What kinds of writing techniques have you all tried? Did you find anything that made you way more productive? Or that made your prose better? What about techniques that failed miserably? Let me know!