It has occurred to me for the 583949379 th time that I hate “Writing to get There”.
What I mean by this is have an amazing idea for something further along in the story, and then realizing all the filler you have to write to get to it. A lot of the time it’s a huge plot development or just a little scene that could be cool/amazing/adorable/etc, but would make no sense to appear at the place you are in the story.
In that moment I always hit a very discouraging writers block. It’s hard to explain the feeling of wanting to write to reach a scene I wish to do, but realizing I have no idea how to get there. Hmm, looks like I just did. Silly me.
Anywho, sorry if this has been written about before, I just wanted to vent my frustrations and hope I’m not alone. So how about it fellow CoG forum goers. Y’all have issues like that?
I know that feeling. My advice is to make that content as interesting as possible and to make it an essential build up to the crazy part, and something you can enjoy reading and writing almost as much. A character’s death can’t make readers cry if there wasn’t lots of quality interaction with them beforehand.
Yeah … sort of having a dilemma like that not too long ago, when i was planning to write some sort of modern day Arthurian story with a friend , i was planning to make Morgana an ally to the modern day protagonist where she was also King Arthur’s secret admirer in the old Camelot , telling protagonist she was meant to warn Arthur of Lancelot’s treachery with Guinevere , but she fail to save him and only manage to sustain Arthur’s body in frozen state … Thus making both Guinevere and Lancelot as the antagonist in my new version, my friend was so mad about me about turning Guinevere into a villain and she insist that Morgana is Evil…Lol
So naturally , our initial combined effort went no where
When I was writing my novel I got a quarter of the way through and scrapped all of it because there was a scene or a little character development I wanted to do. I. HATE. WRITERS BLOCK!
Mmm yes. @Samuel_H_Young I adore how every comment you have for me results in chacracter death. It warms my black little heart .
@Chopper I feel ya on that one. More so due to my writers self esteem being in the gutter, but I have so many unfinished projects. I should start a thread as a graveyard for unfinished works.
I relate so much that it’s almost painful. Even 1/3 of the way into my story, it felt like nothing had happened for 3 chapters straight, only for one chapter to suddenly turn into a plot-development-fest. And then there’s also this on a smaller scale, where the story has to happen in a slightly different setting, and I have no idea how to get it there except in the most inane of sentences.
Another problem I run across is when things feel to convenient and I’m like “hmmmmm could that really happen?!” Then I realize I’ve written 30 pages that have the same convenience and it lowers my will to write
Instead of merely describing the character’s actions, have the actions inform the reader about the character, their state of mind, or their personality.
Rather than,
He turned the knob. He opened the door. He walked inside. He closed the door.
try something along the lines of:
He jiggled the knob, pushed the door open with his shoulder and tumbled through, kicking it closed behind him.
She twisted and untwisted the knob without a single click, letting the door float open. She poked her head into the room, scanned it, then tiptoed inside.
Unless of course you’re just trying to describe a character move around different rooms. In which case, have that action happen between dialogue:
“I don’t get it,” Marshall says, dragging his book bag. He kicks the door open to his room and throws it in, following after it. “If he didn’t wanna study,” he shouts, muffled, “he just shoulda said so!” He comes back out to lean onto the door frame “I mean, is a friggin’ text too much to ask?”
Marshall sighs, shakes his head and stomps toward the kitchen. “There better still be pasta,” he mutters.
Each line is precious, make sure that it actually conveys something beyond the words themselves.
@rose-court Thanks for the advice. And I agree completely about each line being precious. Writer’s block still rears its ugly head and spawns boring sentences, though.
Oh, and praise be to Choicescript for page breaks. Saves me from having to figure out exactly how to transition from scene to scene.
I have this problem a lot myself. Heck, even in my current WIP, I can think of about seven scenes or so that I’d -really- like to write… But can’t, because I haven’t gotten there yet.
Another small variation of this problem that I tend to have is when I plan out a really cool opening/first few pages in a story, and spend so much time pouring everything into the intro, that when I write it, I forget there’s supposed to be more than an intro and realize that I had no plan whatsoever for an actual plot, or anything interesting.
Huh. I prefer, in some cases, for the sentence to be as simple as that, “you twist the knob, you open the door, your eyes adjust, and here you go.”
Perhaps every line is precious, but if you make everything precious, then what makes them precious?
I mean, you can’t have preciousness if you don’t have boringness to compare it with.
I guess, I’m alone on this site of the camp. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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