[caseysoftware]

> A fiction writer I met teaches her students to make three passes at their work. As I recall, she described the first being for ideas, the second for intentions, the third is to make it read as inevitable.

That's really intriguing. Do you have any more info or background on this?

[trop]

It was a conversation at a party, and I fear I've even forgotten the author/teacher's name. She used the three "i"'s as a mnemonic. Thinking about it, I wonder if the sequence was actually "incident", "intent", then "inevitable".

The scheme is to write down what happened in the first pass. Then the second pass is to make things follow -- fix plot holes, clarify motivation, iron out chronology, etc. The third, "inevitable", pass is, of course, key. It is to hide the seams, to make the story/book appear as if it came whole cloth.

One (counter) example would be Faulkner's first novel, "Soldiers' Pay". In it you can see the hand of the author, self-conscious characterizations and manipulation of scene. It's educational to read, as it clarifies his technique in a way that his accomplished and inevitable-seeming books obscure.