April 2025

Can you relate to this? You’ve been dreaming of writing a specific story for a while—maybe even a very long time. Like me, you tend to do some planning before you draft, so you’ve made an outline. A solid outline.

You begin to draft. You know that the most important thing when it comes to a first draft is getting through to the end, however rough and bumpy. Then you’ll have something complete to work with as you revise, refine, tweak and polish. “Just get to The End the first time through!”…that’s the motto for this stage…

Although you know this, you have a terrible time starting. Something (everything) feels off with your beginning. You are not quite sure your opening scene is “the one”. So, you start your story somewhere else. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve it either. There’s something about the tone that isn’t quite working. Yes, yes—you know you should focus on getting through to the end at this stage. You can worry about tone or write a whole new opening later. But if you could only get off to the right start…then you’ll be off to the races, find your groove, and soon have a rough and bumpy but complete draft.

In my experience, sometimes this works. Sometimes it is about properly setting the stage for yourself right from the beginning—right from the first draft—that helps churn up the writing momentum that propels you from A to Z.

But most of the time (also from my own experience!), you find yourself twisted up in the Spinning Start, never getting past Go. What to do?

Getting Random On Purpose!

In my in-person writing workshops and prominently in my writing guide The One Week Writing Workshop, I talk about flow and zig zag. Flow is when you’re in the zone and nothing can stop you from pouring your ideas onto a page. It can also describe writing a story “in order”, that is, flowing from beginning through the middle to the end.

Zig Zagging is to jump around in your thoughts and your writing—out of order, or in any order. When it comes to a draft, it means picking a scene or moment from anywhere in your story concept, writing it out, then jumping to another one moment, then another. You might do this until you get yourself back into a state of flow, or you might continue to zig zag until you complete the draft.

I support zig zagging. I’ve zig zagged my way to a complete manuscript several times. I respect those who always flow, but I say if the flow has stopped—zig zagging even just a bit may help you get back to it!

But sometimes even the usually-freeing zig zagging process needs a jumpstart! You want to zig zag, you believe in zig zagging…but you still find yourself going back to the beginning to get it right before getting the draft written (and now, by the way, I’m speaking from CURRENT experience!).

I’m trying something I’m calling ASSIGNED RANDOMNESS. By this I mean that I’ve found a way to assign random scenes to myself. In the past when I’ve zig zagged (or taught zig zagging), I’ve relied on creative intuition to help determine the “random” scene I choose to work with. I’m asking questions like: Which scene am I excited about? Can I see most vividly? Am I most drawn to today?

But what if you’re so overwhelmed you don’t know what you want, what you’re drawn to, or excited about??? Your intuition and creative drive has checked out, or is currently overloaded. You might need an external force to give you direction, and here’s how you can go about it:

As I mentioned above, I’m a planner, so I always have an outline of some description before I begin to draft. A few weeks ago, I took my outline and did the following:I printed two copies. One I kept intact as a scene “check list”.  I took the other copy and cut out each distinct scene so that it was on its own strip of paper. Next, I jumbled up the strips of paper and placed them in a little box. For the past few days, when I sit down at my computer for a writing session, I pick a strip of paper out of the box and write that scene or section of my story. No questions asked. No hemming and hawing allowed. I don’t question whether I feel like it or not, whether I can see the scene perfectly or not, etc etc. I just write it. When I’m done with the “strip”, I cross off the corresponding scene on the check list outline, and discard it.

Though it’s early days, it’s working beautifully for me so far, so I couldn’t help but share this tactic with you in case you find yourself in a similar predicament!

Is it an ideal method? Not sure.

Will I ever do this again? I dunno.

Did it disrupt my feeling of “stuckness” with my beginning? Yes!

Thus far, is it helping me to take daily steps forward toward finishing a draft? Yes!

It may be a desperate move, and I may be in for a world of headaches when it comes to revision. I can imagine having to do a lot of work harmonizing plot, tone and polishing connections in the revision stage since I’m writing in a rather disjointed way.

And yet…

…there’s always a load of work to do in these areas in revision anyway. Right now, I’m focusing on the relief in having found a way to move forward and through. And it just might work for you, too!

An important note: my experience with zig zagging is rooted in my practice to create an outline/storyboard before drafting. That means I have at least some version of a story concept that flows before I start jumping around. I’m not entirely sure how the zig zagging technique (or “assigned randomness”) works if you’re not a planner but rather a “pantser” (i.e., you write with no outline “by the seat-of-your-pants”).

Are you a pantser? Have you tried zig zagging or some form of it? How has it worked for you? I’d love to know!

Happy writing, all!

Karin

P.S.  If you want to read some of my thoughts on Planner, Pantser and “Plantser” approaches to writing, check out my article Guidelines on How to Write A Book.