The Non-Linear Writing Process: What, How, and Why

by Jenny Hansen

Was your writing process a long and winding road for anyone else here? And by writing process, I mean “a reliable way you’ve been able to approach the page that allows you to finish books.”

I struggled for decades to find my process. And I do mean struggled.

I’d open a Word document for a new book idea, just like all my writing friends, and start typing away. As newbies do, I’d get stuck. . .

Write a few more scenes. . .

Feel lost inside my story. . .

Finally, usually between 100-200 pages into the book, I’d figure that idea just wasn’t enough to sustain a novel. I’d start another book, and repeat the cycle all over again.

Sometime during this nightmare of a process, I’d sneak out of the novels and write a short story to ground my brain. It had the bonus of giving me a boost, since it would prove that I could finish something (and so I wouldn’t feel like such a hack).

It was an endless cycle of words and ideas and hope and failure. My brain grew crowded, my soul grew cranky, and my writing mojo grew very very thin.

Other writers could finish books the linear way…so why couldn’t I?

And then I heard two stories that changed everything about my writing process.

While attending a workshop at the LA Times Festival of Books, Janet Fitch (author of White Oleander) rocked my world.

During her Q & A session, someone asked about her, “Is it true that you wrote White Oleander as a short story?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “The story didn’t come to me all at once. I didn’t even realize I had a book until I submitted it to the Ontario Review, and received a note from (then-editor) Joyce Carol Oates telling me ‘it felt more like the beginning of a novel rather than a standalone short story.’”

I sat, electrified, wondering whether her journey might provide some new options for me.

A few months later, I found out that Diana Gabaldon wrote all the scenes for Outlander as they came to her at different times, and then she put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. (Here’s a great interview about her process.) Then I found out another favorite writer, Lorna Landvik, does the same thing.

These ideas felt revolutionary.

When you begin to write, you typically “do it the way everyone around you is doing it.” Everyone around me wrote a story from beginning to end, so I did too. I didn’t realize I could do chapters and scenes as standalone pieces. But here were these bestselling authors making me feel like it was okay to change things up.

(“Permission” is so freeing as a new writer, isn’t it?)

Scrivener helped too.

I found Scrivener around this same time, and stopped with the Word documents entirely during my first drafts.

Note: For those of you who have never used Scrivener, it is writing gold for the non-linear set. (BTW, Ruth Harris loves Scrivener–ARA)

• Your scenes/chapters are on the left in the Binder area.
• You click on any of them and the writing area opens to the right.

Best of all, you can drag and drop anything anywhere in the Binder area, so I can write scenes as they come to me, and reorder them later.

Above is a photo of my first draft scene folders for my cancer memoir.

Scrivener allows me to keep my forward momentum when I’m drafting a novel. I might have to compile a chapter or two to a Word document for my critique group, but I no longer have to break my brain trying to organize an entire novel inside of one big Word document.

Which brings me to another important thing…

Neurodivergent brains work a bit differently.

When I was 46 years old, I had another conversation that changed everything, this time with a friend who is a therapist. After listening to me moan about the challenges of keeping all the parts of my life sorta-organized, while meeting the needs of my five year-old child, she said, “Well, you know you have ADD, right? That kind of executive function makes things harder.”

My response was, “Wait, WHAT?” Because I come from the part of GenX that preceded that sort of diagnosis, especially for girls. We had all the same things, because ADHD, autism, dyslexia and the rest have always been around, but no one was talking about them.

Rather than accommodations, the messages we usually heard as kids were, “Sit down, shut up, and do your work.” And so we did. We created processes as best we could, and moved along with our work.

But that didn’t mean we were doing the work efficiently.

How my brain affected my writing process.

I have the kind of brain that likes to go, “Ooooo, GLITTER!” And in the last decade or so, I’ve learned a heck of a lot about how to corral that kind of mind.

I don’t write out of order to be different or creative. I write out of order so I can finish books. Like I said, when I wrote like all my writer friends, my book(s) NEVER got done. Seriously, I had 13 unfinished novels and a truckload of self-loathing by the time I stopped banging my head against that wall.

I had to break a book down into tiny little pieces – and I mean TINY— or the process would break my brain and make me loathe writing. When I focused on only one scene at a time, I could stay focused and do good work.

When I focused on a huge Word document of scenes, writing gave me anxiety.

• I couldn’t focus on the work.
• It was too big and cluttered for me to see how the underlying structure needed to work.
• I’d re-write scenes in multiple chapters because they were buried somewhere in the manuscript and I couldn’t see them.

It could give you many many more bullet points, but the bottom line is that it was awful. Worse, it was unnecessary pain.

All I had to do was become a scene writer.

My linear friends thought I was out of my mind. In fact, my Writers in the Storm co-founder (Laura Drake) told me, “I get hives even thinking about writing out of order.”

That’s okay. Twenty writers can have twenty different processes that look different. At the end of the day, it comes down to this:

You must write your stories in a way that allows you to finish them. Period.

And these days we have tools like Scrivener and Plottr and OneStop for Writers that allow you to break your books into pieces that you drag and drop around until they’re ordered as you like.

Some caveats to this non-linear scene writing approach.

Even a disorganized ADD brain like mine had to implement a little bit of order. I have a few must-haves for the non-linear “Scene Writing” approach. You don’t have to have every one of these mastered, but it really, really helps if you at least have the first one. I tend to use them all when I get to the editing process.

You must have a good grasp of writing structure.

Otherwise, you end up with a pile of scenes, or “story blocks,” you can’t use. It also helps to know the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey. I work with more with 3-Act structure because I can keep track of it better in my head.

Scene-dissecting tools help a LOT.

When you work out of order in a book, specifically with scenes, it’s great if you can quickly discover why a scene isn’t working. These are the three tools I use the most:

1. Margie Lawson’s EDITS system.

Tools like the ones Margie teaches you help you quickly figure out where you missed with a scene, especially if you’re a pantser. Her EDITS system visually separates different aspects of a story by color (ex: blue for dialogue, green for setting, yellow for internal narrative, etc.).

If you’re a dialogue-lover like me, you might fly through a whole scene of great conversation and never even notice that you have no body language or setting. But if you simply print it, grab your highlighters, and mark it up, you can spread those pages out and know immediately what to fix.

The immediacy of this method keeps me firmly on track. It leaves no time for distractions.

My recommendation: Invest in yourself with classes or lecture packets from Lawson Writers Academy…you’ll be glad you did.

2. Bob Mayer’s Conflict Lock

According to Bob Mayer, “If you don’t have a conflict lock, you don’t have a story.” He’s the author of Warrior Writer and co-founder of Cool Gus Publishing, and the Conflict Lock is a very cool tool.

Basically the Conflict Lock is about internal and external motivation for the protagonist and the antagonist. You can draw a quick table with three columns and three rows.

Character	Goal	Conflict
Protagonist	What the protag wants and needs.	Antagonist wants and needs BLOCK the protagonist from achieving his or her goals.
Antagonist	What the antag wants and needs.	Protagonist wants and needs BLOCK the antagonist from achieving his or her goals.

 

This little table is something visual I can keep handy while I write, and it simplifies scene problems. Here’s a blog from Shannon Curtis to tell you more.

3. Understanding your story’s DNA (aka theme)

I think hard about theme pretty early in my process for an important reason. If you have a strong visual of your story’s underlying message, its more likely that you will automatically write to it.

That story DNA will inform every scene choice you make because it has to. John August, the screenwriter for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish, says it much better than I do in this post.

What is your Story DNA?

DNA in the dictionary is the “fundamental and distinctive characteristics of someone or something, especially when regarded as unchangeable.”

These are five things about your story that DON’T change:

1. Physical details (everything from the usual to disabilities to setting)

2. Main characters’ misbelief.

Note: Lisa Cron (Wired for Story, Story Genius) posits that a story’s entire point is to correct your main character’s misbelief. She believes that misbelief is what drives your entire story. This misbelief is a key part of your story’s DNA and it’s vital you focus on it as you write your story, especially if you’re a pantser.

3. Internal and external conflict

NowNovel offers a great post on Internal and External Conflict with definitions and tips.

4. Theme (this is usually why you’re writing your story)

Example: Linear writers like Laura typically write straight through to help themselves discover theme. I usually start with theme and then write to it.

5. Genre

Genre is a promise you keep to the reader. If you’re writing a romance, there will be a “happily ever after.” Mystery novel protagonists will solve the crime. Anything less will make your reader want to throw the book across the room because they read your book trusting you will keep your genre’s promise. It helps me to keep this in mind as I write.

There are likely more things that could be included in Story DNA, but these are the five that keep me on track as a non-linear writer.

Final Thought on Writing Process

At the end of the day, I believe the most important thing about a writing process – be it plotter, pantser, linear or non-linear – is that it works for YOU. Spinning stories is hard work. If anything in this post makes your life easier, then my day is made.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the writing mantra that gets me through when my brain gets the best of me:

We’re writers. Writers persevere. Even if it’s only one page at a time–hell, one sentence at a time–we keep going. We are mighty beings formed of stubbornness, creativity, and caffeine. And we can do hard things like a BOSS.

Where are you at in your “process journey?” I’d love to hear about it down in the comments!

Thanks so much for letting me visit with you here. 😊

by Jenny Hansen, June 8, 2025

What about you, scriveners, what is your writing process? Do you write from beginning to end, or does your writing process take you from one scene to another, not necessarily in order? How about Scrivener vs. Word? Which do you prefer?

About the author

Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoirs, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she loves this sit-down-and-work thing.

As a co-founder of Writers in the Storm (WITS), Jenny has supported writers online since 2010. WITS, recognized by Writer’s Digest as a top website for writers, offers weekly posts on writing craft and inspiration. Jenny is currently revising a memoir about her cancer journey, with a style described as “get busy laughing, or get busy crying.”

Find her on WITS, Facebook, or Instagram.

 

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Featured image: purchased from Deposit Photos