Embrace the Chaos: Capture First, Organize Later

I am a software engineer. I’ve been programming since high school and have worked in software for close to 20 years. I think about problems in logical, categorical ways. When I see a problem, I wonder: How can I break this down into smaller, digestible pieces and organize them?

That instinct is useful at work. It is a mixed blessing when I write fiction.

I started writing fiction out of frustration. I couldn’t find stories that explored worlds the way I enjoy, and eventually I accepted that if I wanted the kind of story that means the most to me, I would probably have to write it myself. Writing it turned out to be a different kind of problem than the ones I solve for a living, and the difference is what this article is about.

The Urge to File Things

When an idea shows up halfway through a chapter, my first reaction is to ask where it belongs. Is it a character detail? A piece of history? A rule of the magic system? A plot point? I want a folder for it before I have finished having it.

The trouble is that the question is usually premature. An idea that arrives half-formed has not yet decided what it is. If I force an answer, I tend to get one of two results. Either I file it under whatever label fits least badly and lose track of it, or I stop writing to sort it and lose the thread of the scene I was in. Both cost me more than the idea was worth at that moment.

The part of me that wants to classify and the part of me that wants to catch unfinished thoughts are not on the same schedule. Catching has to come first. Classifying can wait until there is something to classify.

Write It Down and Come Back

I watched a video from Perry Daniels a while ago, in which he presents what he calls the Grail Method. The part that stayed with me was a very simple habit. Write down everything in your head in a journal, without worrying about order, and then study and re-read it. Don’t overthink it and don’t give it structure.

I can’t claim to have mastered the habit, and I won’t pretend the video changed my life. The habit comes from his video. What I do with it, including the broad buckets I describe below, is my own adaptation. What appealed to me was how little it asked. It separates two jobs I normally do at once, recording a thought and deciding what the thought means, and it puts them in a sensible order. The first job should be cheap enough that you do it every time. The second job happens later, with more information.

Rereading Is Where the Work Happens

It would be easy to hear “write it all down” and picture a pile that just grows. The rereading is what makes it useful, and rereading is active. You are not scanning for the thing you already know you wrote. You are reading as someone who now knows more than the person who wrote it.

Here is a made-up example of how that can go. Suppose a writer jots this down early in a draft:

The harbor guards seem oddly relaxed. Maybe someone pays them?

A few weeks later, in a different note about a different scene:

Guard mentions the tide bell again. Third time. Everyone reacts to it.

On their own, neither note is much. Read together, something shows up. The bell might be how the harbor keeps its schedule, and the relaxed guards might be relaxed because the bell tells them when trouble is allowed. A third note appears, written after the rereading:

The bell runs the harbor. Guards are paid in tide-time: they work the ebb, and the flood belongs to whoever has bought it. Check chapter 4, where the smugglers land at high water.

None of those notes was filed correctly when it was written, and none of them needed to be. The value came from the writer returning to them, noticing a pattern, and deciding it mattered. At that point the idea earns a proper home, maybe a page of its own, maybe a revision to an earlier scene. Promotion happens when the value shows up, not before.

That is what I mean by becoming a scholar of your own work. You are reading your own notes the way a researcher reads sources, looking for what connects and what contradicts.

Buckets Instead of Verdicts

This is where my engineering habits can be put to better use. I don’t have to give up structure. I can use broad structure to orient myself instead of demanding a final, correct filing.

A large bucket is enough to find a thought again. “Harbor,” “the investigation,” “magic,” “things I’m unsure about.” If I am wrong about which bucket something belongs in, the cost is small, because I will read through the bucket again anyway. A precise taxonomy applied too early is a different matter. It makes every note a decision, and decisions slow down capture.

I think of Scriptri’s existing structures, notes and worldbuilding pages among them, in this spirit. They give me places to put things near the manuscript. I would like to treat them as broad places to gather material that I refine later, and I try not to treat them as a test of whether I filed each note correctly.

Structure Still Matters

I want to be careful not to oversell the mess. I am not arguing against structure or against rigor. A pile of notes you never reread is just a larger pile. Finished prose still needs revision, and a story with a long history still needs continuity work. Sometimes I have had to substantially rework a storyline so it made more sense, and I kicked myself for not catching a detail earlier (ask me how I know).

What I have changed is the order of operations. Structure is something I build so that I can find things and see how they connect. It supports discovery. When I apply it too soon, it starts to stand in for the discovery itself.

So I try to let the mess land first. I write the thing down, I leave it alone, and I come back to it with a clearer head and a more useful question. Then I connect it, refine it, and give it a home when it has shown me it deserves one. That is a slower way to feel organized, and it has been a faster way to finish.