A Writer's Device: Branches and Skews as experiments.

There is a tremendous amount of writing required to produce even a novella in a timely manner. Writing a full novel is like running a marathon. With all that writing to do just to get the job done, why on Earth would you willfully add more writing about things outside the planned telling that you won't be using?!?

Well, I guess I had best start with the negative case: Most writers of fiction seem to write way too much and often too much about things that will be cut from the manuscript in editing. Or should be. They may well already explore all the alternate outcomes and repercussions of changes as part of their massive output. They sure don't need to add this device to their process.

But for the rest of us, it remains a truism that we often don't get to write about "what we want to focus on writing about" and instead have to "write what the story needs to be told". c.f. all my previous complaints about wanting to write more Sherri stories but knowing full well her story is -told- in Remember When and that's done. Far more commonly we need to write the scene the story calls for, and then move on to the next such scene or chapter. Many things may result because the first scene occurred, but only the obviously important ones to the plot are referenced later. But you, the writer may feel like you don't fully understand all those results. That makes it harder for you to explain to the reader that the meaningful result didn't occur in a vacuum, when you write those later chapters.

If that is a thing that bothers you, then try these sort of things before you take on those later chapters:

Make notes, perhaps even write short scenes or bits of dialogue, during the "scenes missing" part immediately after the first scene (in our example above). Set those aside after convincing yourself you know how that scene more widely influences the "world of the story". Worst case, write an off-genre version of the missing part of the scene to teach yourself about it. That would be a Skew, by the way. More on those later.

Write a branch; Look at that first scene and its outcome, and then write a brief passage as if there was alternate outcome instead. Look especially at how the characters would be different in the future chapters if "what if" had occurred. You can note those things as what a particularly self-aware character might think back and consider, in those future chapters.

Write a skew: In this case "skew' means a completely off-genre or off-perspective retelling of a scene already planned or written to the form you intend.

Example: If you are writing a desperate Techno-thriller where time is of the essence and every character is on-edge with tension and one character is absent from a scene, said to have had to spend part of a day with their spouse doing something mundane... and then you try to just write the next scene, you might miss appreciating any effect that might have on the returning character's mindset. But if you write that as a scene in the novel... let's just say that genre fans might SCREAM about 5 pages of browsing through departments at Macy's together talking about whether or not the matter with the spouse's uncle's health issue was resolvable.

You as the writer can benefit from knowing or exploring how the character would change for reintroduction in later chapters, but your readers probably don't need to go through the motions with you. So, one afternoon while ordering your seasonally spiced beverage from the barista down the block, write such skews after critical moments. Not to use them. To know them.

Besides, you might just discover that you do have more to tell worthy of publication about a scene or a character, or that you have a marvelous opportunity to write an Unreliable Witness telling of your epic tale two or three more times. Or, you know, you might discover a previously unknown talent of your own for a genre or style you've never tried.

Just don't ever forget that the goal is to finish the manuscript, not to explore all the options, yeah?