Writing in Order vs Out of Order

Imagine you are in the middle of writing your story when an intriguing idea for a scene comes to you.

The problem? The scene in mind doesn't happen until much later. You still have quite a few pages or several chapters until you get to it.

One aspect of writing a story or a longer work such as a novel, is writing it in order versus jumping around and writing it out of order based on the ideas that come to you.

While it’s important to write any idea that comes to you down, sometimes you might want to do more than that and start writing the actual scene in your WIP (work in progress).

Writing in order or out of order?

I'm someone who finds comfort and structure in writing in order although there have been times I've jumped around from one scene to another because I thought of an idea for a scene that I was so eager to write, I couldn't wait until the time to write it came up. My main concern with writing out of order is missing important plot holes or forgetting to conclude a scene if I jump around in my story.

I'm sure there are plenty who can find a sort of organized chaos in writing their scenes out of order and in a way the chaos gives them their own sense of comfort and structure.

So, what do you do when you think of an amazing idea for a later scene but you prefer to write in order?

The best you can do is to write the scene or the basics of it down as soon as you can so when it is time to write the scene, you'll have the idea in front of you.

Or maybe be a little adventurous for once and go a little out of order!