How We Really Write Novels
I ’ve been reading a book titled Code Complete . It’s the kind of book that if you write any computer code at all, from a simple webpage to a large software project, you ought to read. For the rest of you, you would find if very dull. But as I was reading it I thought about the similarity between software development and writing a novel. There is a debate, if you will, among novelists between the plotters and the pantsers. The plotters say you ought to outline the book first, then begin writing. The pantsers just grab a few interesting characters and jump right into writing. Which is better? One of the things Steve McConnell talks about in Code Complete is that no one ever develops software completely using a top down or a bottom up approach. The top down approach is similar to what plotters do, in that you start at a very high level of abstraction and subdivide it over and over until you reach the point where it is manageable chunks. The bottom up approach starts with the parts and...