Writing – Recognizing a problem and finding a solution

I’ve been stuck on one part of my story for a while now. I gave up an skipped it so it wouldn’t hold me back too much. I’ve written past and around it. I’ve given it a good stern ignoring for just about as long as I could. It’s a scene where my characters take action to better their situation and earn the freedom (or perhaps respect) necessary to take the first steps towards resolving the most obvious major conflict of the story (a religious war). I’ve sat down to write it a number of times and it just wouldn’t come together.

The solution came to me in the gym this morning as I was listening to The Roundtable Podcast. They were talking about story development. It was nothing to do with my troublesome scene but my head was in that writer’s space and only half listening when it hit me. I was forcing the characters to do something out of character. I had spent the first fifteen or sixteen scenes setting up the characters to move steadily along their arcs and then I have them take a giant leap without a corresponding impetus. So I need a reason for them to leap ahead and several came to mind almost immediately. Then I actually cocked my head to one side and, in an almost embarrassingly writerly cliché, starting talking to myself. “Wait a minute….what if….hmmm”. Fortunately the solution had percolated into my brain before I was snapped back to reality by the guy watching me hold a barbell in the air and not do bench presses.

http://www.roundtablepodcast.com/

Rather than layering a new reason for them to act into the story, I had options. There were other actions that the characters could take that would follow both the story I’ve already laid out and allow them to take action to move the story forward. It would also build more character development on top. When I think about it now, I can’t believe that I was thinking about doing it another way. As an aside, I had written some specifics about the scene in this blog but, when I looked back at them, it was so obvious that I felt like a complete moron for not seeing it sooner. A quick edit and they were history. As my lovely wife would say, I already provide my friends more than enough evidence of my idiocy without going international on the interwebs.

I never thought it would happen to me. I know that sounds like the start of a letter to Penthouse but this is way cooler (at least for a happily married guy like me). I’ve actually heard authors discuss the issue of being stuck or writers block and how it can just be a way for your story to tell you that something is wrong. This couldn’t happen to me. I know it’s a problem so I won’t fall in the trap. Well, guess what. You have to write in order to learn. I think that hearing other authors discuss it in a podcast helped me figure it out sooner. Who knows how long I would have languished without having heard their experiences. In this case, I (eventually) recognized the problem, found a solution and then looked at it one more time to find an even better solution that is going to make my story even stronger. Wow. Happy day.

Anyway, I’ve already done my mini-outline for tonight’s writing and I’m excited to get at it.