Writing Bass-Ackwards

by Jessica McCann

My daughter and her circle of friends love Manga -- Asian graphic novels that you read from back to front, right to left. She gave me one to read once, one with a story she thought I would love. I tried to read it; I really did. Just couldn’t do it. It felt completely bass-ackwards reading a book that way, and it prevented me from enjoying the story.

That doesn’t mean “backwards” is wrong, though. My daughter loves reading that way. And (for you older folks) Seinfeld fans might remember a popular episode that aired backwards, scene by scene. It featured the gang flying to India for the wedding of a woman who had long been one of Elaine’s archenemies. Why on Earth would they spend the time and money on such a trip? Because the scenes played out in reverse, we didn’t get the answer to that question until the end of the show. Would that episode have been as funny or interesting had we learned the reason in the opening scene? Probably not.

Freelance writer and memoir author Jessica Handler encourages writers to write out of order. “Just because your story follows a timeline doesn't mean you have to write it linearly,” she wrote in a piece for The Writer years ago ( “Writing without a Map”). “If you're inspired to write a scene other than the one that comes next in your manuscript, go for it. You can put the story in the right order later.”

When I was working on the early drafts of my first novel, the opening five or so chapters felt like one of those Jumble word puzzles -- in which the letters are all mixed up and you have a clue to solve or question to answer. I had to re-arrange those chapters several times before the order finally felt right, before the answer became clear. At the time, it was frustrating. As a novice fiction writer, I felt like I was doing it all wrong. Once I finally found the right combination, I realized it was simply the process I needed to go through to get the story right. I learned to the same chaos as I wrote my subsequent novels.

Does your writing sometimes feel backwards? Don’t give up on it. Just keep writing and keep moving pieces of the story around. Run it backwards and forwards. When it’s right, you’ll know it (even if that means the story plays out backwards), and you’ll hold your readers to the very end… or the beginning.

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Jessica McCann has written for dozens of publications and organizations, including Business Week, Phoenix, The Writer, Boyd Gaming, Allied Waste and The Phoenix Zoo. She’s also an award-winning historical novelist. A version of this piece appears in her nonfiction work, WORDS: Essays on Reading, Writing, and Life. Check out more for readers and writers on her website and social media channels.

https://linktr.ee/jmccannwriter

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