Hitting the writing wall -- Oh the joy
I'm just on Chapter 2 and yesterday it was like Raine and Mychael were actors who'd forgotten their lines. I expected this to happen in maybe another chapter or so -- but on Chapter 2?? Jeez. I think I've brainstormed my way past it, so today I push on with that scene. For me hitting the wall (or stumbing over speed bump) has three causes. It can be one, the other, all of them, or a combination.
1. You don't know where you're going with a chapter. If you don't know where you're going, how the heck are your characters going to know what to say? It's like plopping your characters down on an empty stage and expecting them to start spouting off something brilliant. Not gonna happen.
2. You think you know where you're going with a chapter, but it's the wrong direction and your characters refuse to cooperate. In movie production, the equivalent would be the actors going back to their trailers, and refusing to come out until you get your crap together and give them a script they can work with.
3. You've just got too much stuff to work with. I've got six pages of notes on what could happen in this chapter. The problem lies in picking from what could happen to what needs to happen. If it's not what needs to happen, the dialogue will just sound wrong coming out of your characters' mouths. This is the big red flag for me that I need to stop and think about what I'm doing, because it obviously isn't the right thing. My characters have never led me astray.
Now, I going to go knock on some trailer doors and see if I can get Raine and Mychael back on the set.
1. You don't know where you're going with a chapter. If you don't know where you're going, how the heck are your characters going to know what to say? It's like plopping your characters down on an empty stage and expecting them to start spouting off something brilliant. Not gonna happen.
2. You think you know where you're going with a chapter, but it's the wrong direction and your characters refuse to cooperate. In movie production, the equivalent would be the actors going back to their trailers, and refusing to come out until you get your crap together and give them a script they can work with.
3. You've just got too much stuff to work with. I've got six pages of notes on what could happen in this chapter. The problem lies in picking from what could happen to what needs to happen. If it's not what needs to happen, the dialogue will just sound wrong coming out of your characters' mouths. This is the big red flag for me that I need to stop and think about what I'm doing, because it obviously isn't the right thing. My characters have never led me astray.
Now, I going to go knock on some trailer doors and see if I can get Raine and Mychael back on the set.
posted by Lisa Shearin at
8:27 AM
4 Comments:
*picks up pompoms* You can do it Lisa, you can do it!!! ;)
...just climb that wall (easy for me to say, I know) :)
Take Care,
Lorna (Scot)
Thank you, Lorna! I think I'm back on track. Apparently Chapter 2 needed to "cook" a little longer. I lost a day's writing, but I can make up for it.
I appreciate the encouragement! : )
Glen Cook's troubles writing one of the Black Company books (the book of the south)got so bad that I walked up to him at a convention and said, "The Question," because I figured he was completely tired of being asked, "When is the next Black Company book coming out?" His problems writing included, all the characters were headed off to have a war--and then when they got there, they refused to cooperate, they weren't going to have a war after all. He had to go back to way early in the book and start rewriting all over again....
(And yes, he did know exactly what I was asking. Someone else who was walking by at the time gave us both a look of disbelief/incomprehension. "He knows what I mean," I said to her...
What a great story! I adore Glen Cook's Garrett PI books. I can completely identify with The Problem. I've been asked why I don't just skip the problem part and move on. Not possible. I figure characters are all members of the same union. If a couple of them go on strike, the rest will follow. And they're not going back to work until I go back and fix what I screwed up. They'll stand there and stare at me for as long as it takes. Toward the end of MLTF, poor Piaras was stuck on that altar for nearly a month before I worked out the confrontation between Raine and Sarad Nukpana. Poor kid. Thankfully, he doesn't hold a grudge.
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