: Re: Is the Agile planning methodology useful for the writing process of a fictional book? I've been wanting to write a book in my spare time for a long time now, and while I've tried to start

@Jessie137

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Agile is for corporate sub-groups who suffer from a lack of creative flexibility, blamed on a top-down project-management style (while avoiding pointing the finger directly at upper management). The 'problem' Agile solves is a metaphorical waterfall where projects flow from top to bottom, but can't be paused or pushed back up the waterfall should any creative innovation occur at a later stage.

The goal is to spark creative communication within the sub-group, and develop a common language around practical problem solving. By iterating through short-term projects, the team will hopefully build skills that include finishing projects faster while incorporating more creative ideas. Agile attempts to avoid corporate-style 'meetings' where managers dominate the conversation –– ego-driven, rather than results driven.

The flaw in adopting this methodology in your creative writing is that you are not a team. If there is a lack of creativity in your writing, it's presumably not a problem of stifled communication. You can make an analogy to the 'waterfall' problem that Agile is meant to solve, but compartmentalizing yourself into sub-groups for creative flexibility, and hands-off project managers, will only take you so far. There is no 'group intelligence' that emerges. You are not actually broadening your creative input, and you are not circumventing the ego-driven manager.

The elements in particular I'm interested in using:


Dividing my book into small pieces of work that I can feasibly do in
a single sitting, like writing a chapter outline or doing some world
building;
Planning the pieces I'll be working on in weekly sections
that if necessary can be finished later on;
Turning blockers into
new pieces of work that I can plan to do after finishing the current
tasks instead of getting stuck on them;
Being able to delay more
detailed pieces of work to later drafts without losing track of
them.

To simplify, 1 and 2 are the same; 3 and 4 are the same.

Setting writing goals for yourself sounds like a no-brainer, whether it's goal-oriented (worldbuild the small village in Chapter 2) or task-oriented (write 500 words each day). You will have off days because you do not have a team to pick up the slack, but just being in the habit of writing will help with writing.

However, by pushing problematic scenes and creative blocks to a later session, you are essentially re-creating the waterfall problem. You are kicking the can down the road. Inevitably, some of your creative blocks will solve themselves, but many will require retcon on the story and characters. This is a normal part of writing, but it's where your Agile method stops being useful.

I could see a situation where creative writing suffers from corporate management: for instance the various Star Wars properties would probably benefit from Agile method, with sub-groups allowed more creative freedom and less stuck with what came before waterfall. This is not your situation.

You don't ask for an alternative, but my advice would be Scrivener and a pomodoro timer. Scrivener will help capture all your ideas as they occur, and allow you to write longer work in piecemeal sections as they transition from outlines and short treatments to final scenes and chapters – it's very easy to create a placeholder of notes and goals that will eventually develop into full story beats. The Pomodoro technique seems closest to your time-management goals but is designed for one person.

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