Skip or Straight?

When you fellow writer's, write books, how do you typically write them: straight through, as in chapter by chapter, or do you skip around, writing a chapter here, or a chapter there?

I have done both. A romantic fiction novel I wrote I did by going from start to finish, but believe it or not, on my memoir, I skipped around a lot as I wrote it. By that I mean I wrote the second to the last chapter, well before I did some at the beginning of the book. I also did that with my coffee table farming book, skipping around a lot as well. I have even had some short stories where I wrote the ending of the story first, and then later went and figured out a beginning to the book.

Skipping all the way for me.

I more or less write the first draft straight through, whether it be story or novel.  I say more or less, though, because sometimes when I have ideas about the story I will have written them down already, and I may paste them in when I've reached the appropriate place (or maybe I'll paste them in at the end of what I'm writing to act as a kind of destination guide).  But earlier out-of-sequence writing rarely (never?) gets used in its originally written form.

Depends. If I'm writing a travelling journal, it's obviously chronological. Maybe I'll revise it at a later date to add things like map and photo references, etc.

However, when writing a technical report it's always 'skip' because it has time constraints and works best if the bones of the report exists. The skeleton also allows a format to be chosen and for thought-bubbles to be jotted down before they're overlook by the complexity of data.

I really enjoy the latter because it involves more creative thought. All the thought in the former is created by the experience when in the actual process of travelling.

My brain doesn't work linearly. Imagine 10 different movies on the same player, but set on "shuffle".

I write whatever scene is playing in my head at the time. When I have enough scenes written, I'll put them in order. Eventually, the in-between scenes will reveal themselves.

That said, 99% of the stories I've written are still missing crucial scenes.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:My brain doesn't work linearly. Imagine 10 different movies on the same player, but set on "shuffle".

I write whatever scene is playing in my head at the time. When I have enough scenes written, I'll put them in order. Eventually, the in-between scenes will reveal themselves.

That said, 99% of the stories I've written are still missing crucial scenes.

I have some of that as well...and is kind of the reason I posted this question. If, 99% of your stories are missing crucial scenes though, that implies 99% are uncompleted books or stories...so is that effective writing? I am not being judgmental at all, because I am the same way, and have certain uncompleted stories and books myself.

I am just wondering if going from start to finish...even forcing myself to push through the areas I would like to skip...would be best?

If I was to give myself a writing "style" it would be a lot like the author Stephen Crane, who wrote the Red badge of Courage. In reading that a person will see he adds a lot of detail, but manages to do so without slowing the story down too much. It is a hard job to say the least. But because I do write like he did, I will often get to an area of my story that needs additional details, so I make a note to come back to it, but I have stories that are all done except these detailed areas.

It is kind of funny too, but I came up with a pretty good story line, but I could not think of an ending to it. A few months ago, the ending came to me, but it was 22 years later!!

I keep all my stories and books on my computer, and have for years just because sometimes this does happen. A story I had never finished, suddenly has an ending, or a middle I was not sure about.

It is definitely a curse!