Non-Linear Writing: How Nabokov, Faulkner, and Gabaldon Wrote Out of Order

In 1967, Vladimir Nabokov gave an interview to the Paris Review from his suite at the Montreux Palace hotel in Switzerland. Journalist Herbert Gold asked him how he worked. Nabokov replied:

"The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done."

Nabokov didn't write from beginning to end. He wrote scenes — on index cards, in pencil, with an eraser on top — and rearranged them afterward. Lolita was largely drafted this way, on Bristol cards, in roadside motels while his wife Vera drove across America hunting butterflies.

Nabokov wasn't an outlier. It's a method — and it has a name: non-linear writing.

What is non-linear writing?

Non-linear writing means writing the scenes of your novel out of order — not in the story's chronological sequence, nor in chapter order — then assembling them afterward.

It's the opposite of sequential writing: start at chapter 1, write through to the last, period. The sequential approach is intuitive, it's what we learn in school. But it has a fundamental problem for long-form narratives: it assumes you know exactly where you're going before you start.

Non-linear writing assumes nothing. It says: write what you see now, where the energy takes you, and deal with the order later.

The writers who worked this way

Nabokov and the index cards

Nabokov is the most documented case. He had the entire novel in his head — the "pattern" — before writing a single word. Then he'd fill in the squares, in any order. Each morning, he'd reshuffle his cards, watch the structure emerge, find new paths.

This method explains the density of his novels. Since he wasn't working sequentially, he could easily insert a passage, add a reference, or amend his text to create thematic motifs running through the pages. The result is the most meticulously composed prose of the 20th century.

Faulkner and the walls of Rowan Oak

William Faulkner had a different but equally non-linear approach. For his novel A Fable (Pulitzer Prize, 1955), he wrote the outline directly on the walls of his office at Rowan Oak, his home in Oxford, Mississippi. In graphite and red grease pencil, day after day.

The anecdote is delightful: he'd first taped pages to the wall, but a fan had blown them away. So he wrote directly on the plaster. His wife, furious, had the walls repainted. Faulkner rewrote everything — then shellacked the surface so nobody could erase it again. The inscriptions are still visible today at Rowan Oak, preserved by the University of Mississippi.

Faulkner couldn't write A Fable linearly — the novel interweaves dozens of narrative threads across a single week during World War I. He needed to see the structure in space, not in time.

Diana Gabaldon and the jigsaw puzzle

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series (over 25 million copies sold), describes her method with disarming clarity:

"I don't write with an outline, I don't even write in a straight line! I write in scenes where I can see something happening."

She writes "lots of little pieces and then glues them together like a jigsaw puzzle," working "forward and back, backwards and forward, until a scene is finished — then hops somewhere else and writes something different." She doesn't even have chapters until she's about to send the manuscript to her editor: breaking the text into chapters is "just about the last thing" she does.

Cortázar and the book that reads out of order

Julio Cortázar took the concept all the way to the reader. His novel Hopscotch (Rayuela, 1963) offers two readings: one linear (chapters 1 through 56), the other following a prescribed order that jumps across the book's 155 chapters. The unofficial third option is to read the chapters in any order you like.

The book even contains a "Table of Instructions" guiding the reader through the non-linear path. The title — Hopscotch — is a metaphor: the reader jumps from square to square, like a child playing hopscotch, pushing the "pebble" of understanding from one chapter to the next.

Cortázar couldn't write Hopscotch linearly. The book is its structure.

Why it works

Non-linear writing isn't an artistic whim. It solves concrete problems:

1. It follows creative energy

Some days, you can clearly see the climax scene. Other days, it's a dialogue in chapter 3 that obsesses you. Non-linear writing says: write what's burning now. The alternative — forcing chapter 7 when your head is in chapter 22 — produces dead pages.

2. It beats writer's block

Writer's block almost always strikes in the same place: between two scenes, when you need to write the transition, the "connective tissue" of the novel. Non-linear writing lets you skip those passages and come back later, when the context is clear.

3. It lets you test the structure

By writing the key scenes first — the climax, the point of no return, the revelation — you test the structure before filling in the gaps. If the climax doesn't work, you know before you've written 200 pages to get there.

4. It makes revision easier

When each scene is an independent unit, reorganization is natural. Moving chapter 12 before chapter 8? That's a drag & drop, not surgery. Deleting an entire subplot? You remove the corresponding cards.

The risks (and how to manage them)

Non-linear writing has its traps:

Consistency: if you write the ending before the middle, your character may evolve in contradictory directions. You need a tracking system — living character sheets, notes on each character's emotional state at every point in the story.

Connections: transitions between scenes written separately are often the weakest passages. You need a dedicated pass, at the end of the process, to smooth the joints.

The big picture: when you have 50 scenes written out of order, it's easy to lose the overall vision. That's where a storyboard — visual, manipulable — becomes essential.

How Extypis makes non-linear writing natural

Most word processors impose linearity. A Word file is a stream of text from beginning to end. To write non-linearly, you need to create dozens of separate files, name them, organize them, merge them manually.

Extypis is built for non-linear:

Chapters and sheets: your novel is broken into chapters containing sheets (scenes). Each sheet is independent. You can write sheet 3 of chapter 12 without having touched chapter 1.

Drag & drop: reorganize your scenes and chapters by dragging and dropping in the sidebar. Move a scene from one chapter to another in a second.

Storyboard: kanban-style board with chapters as columns and scenes as cards. Summaries, color labels, real content preview. It's the digital version of Nabokov's index cards — but you can rearrange them without a fan blowing them away.

Multi-sheet mode: select multiple scenes (CMD+click) and edit them simultaneously in the editor. Perfect for checking consistency between distant scenes.

@character mentions: when writing non-linearly, the risk of inconsistency is real. @ mentions let you track each character across the manuscript, with charts showing their distribution per chapter.

Snapshots: before reorganizing, create a snapshot. If the new order doesn't work, restore the previous version.

Linear or non-linear: it's not a binary choice

Most authors who practice non-linear writing don't use it exclusively. Nabokov had the complete plan in his head before writing — that's a form of linear structure. Gabaldon writes her scenes out of order but assembles them in a final chronological sequence.

Non-linear writing isn't anarchy. It's the freedom to follow inspiration while maintaining structure. Nabokov's index cards, Faulkner's walls, Gabaldon's jigsaw puzzle — these are structuring tools, not evidence of chaos.

The choice isn't "linear or non-linear." The choice is: does my tool allow both?

If your writing software forces you to write from beginning to end, it removes an option. If, instead, it lets you write in whatever order inspires you and reorganize afterward — you're writing like Nabokov. Without the index cards. And without the fan.