Writing out of sequence? Not for me

I guess everyone has different ways of writing a novel. A friend recently posted that he is working on the third book of his series and he said he already has several scenes written which he will slot in at the appropriate places. Many of these scenes were written for book two and were not used and he says he may even save some of them for a possible fourth book. I've read his books, they are very good, they flow well and there is never a hint that any part is written out of sequence. My wife’s method is similar. She writes parts of her books and then writes round the scenes she has.

I can’t do that. When I sit down to write a novel I start with the first word on page one and write in chronological sequence until I get to the end. I never write a scene and put it in, I just can’t work that way. I may go back and tweak something, put a clue in here, take a too-obvious pointer out there, but I never go forward and write a whole chunk of the book. I think the reason for this is because when I start writing a book I generally know who the principle characters will be, I know how it will end and I know how I want to start it but once I've started to put words on paper and have introduced my people they simply take on a life of their own and go their own way.

I can’t write a scene for the middle of the book because these people I've created may never get to that situation. I don’t manipulate them, they find their own way to the final chapter and I don’t think I can work any other way.

The hardest part for me is always the beginning of a book. The prologue for “Innocent?” (coming out in December) is about three pages long but it took me weeks to write to my own satisfaction. Once I had it done though the rest of the novel just flowed because these characters took over but I agonized about how to get them started on their journey.

As I said, my friend is a good writer, his books sell well and his method obviously works for him. Personally I can’t work his way, just as well I guess, if were all the same the world would be a very boring place.