We’ve all been tempted to skip ahead while reading a book. I’m not talking about a bad book where a reader skips to the ending to more quickly move on to something worth reading. I mean a good book where the reader gets impatient for even better scenes with thoughts like, “I suspect he’ll eventually win her over with his pirate impression, and I need to know if I should be tracking every mention for possible foreshadowing,” or “I predict she will find the magic portal back home under that spooky shed when she accidentally burns it to the ground, and I just can’t wait to know if I’m right.” These are universal thoughts. But we all resist the urge to look ahead because that’s just not how you read a book.
I have to admit I’m occasionally tempted to skip ahead with books I write as well. Sometimes in the early chapters I’m thinking about how much more fun it’ll be to write the super romantic thing he says or does to really cement the relationship. I have to wait. I can’t write the super romantic line until it becomes romantic through everything that happens first. I need to multiply the feelings before I add the people.
Let’s examine a real, non-romantic example. One of the best lines in The Lord of the Rings is when Sam says, “Come, Mr. Frodo! I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.” Starting the book from this line makes the amazing quote dumb. What is this thing that Mr. Frodo can’t carry? And why does Sam think carrying it with the added weight of a person will be easier? Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And if you read just enough to know they’re trying to get to the top of Mt. Doom, it’s even worse. Anyone trying to climb something literally called Mt. Doom must be a moron. It’s the rest of the story that makes it awesome. Reading it out of order makes as much sense as a math problem with only half the equation.
It's the same with a romance. I can’t skip to a scene where the heroine swoons over a plate of deviled eggs when the hero peels off the tin foil, puts it on his head, and says, “Pro nobis.” By itself, it’s a terrible scene. But… if I’ve written the part where they meet at a picnic reaching for the last deviled egg at the same time, and the part where he works to overcome his fear of mustard bottles to make the recipe he got from her mom, and I’ve written several scenes about her recurring dream where she’s married to a guy she can’t see but always makes her feel safe and cherished and has tin foil on his head, and I included the bit that specifies her love language is Latin… then it’s a beautiful moment. Right?
Don’t worry about any of that being a spoiler for book 4 though. I’m still working on the multiplication, and I haven’t added any deviled eggs.