Split The Order
Write the making order and the experience order separately; stop when neither can be read off the other.
Formerly Imposition
The printer's sheet: page 16 beside page 1, correct once folded.
Seen in Julio Cortázar, Rayuela (Hopscotch), 1963
Try it on your work
Make the parts of the next thing in an order chosen by convenience, not by how they will finally be encountered: last part first if it's easiest. Assembly will prove the two orders were never the same thing.
Write the ending first. Then the middle, then the opening. Note what the ending demanded of an opening you hadn't written yet.
List the order your project's parts will be experienced in, then list the order they must be built in. Every place the lists disagree is a decision you had made without noticing.
How it has been used
Make in one order, deliver in another: printers arrange pages on the sheet in a sequence no reader ever sees. Separate the order of making from the order of experiencing and design each on its own terms. The move forbids letting one order dictate the other.
Where it leads
Grouped under Help me decide what comes first