Water from a stone

Go write a short story featuring one or more of your characters doing something that is only tangetially related to your WIP

goatpiper said:

If you think I'm whining too much, then feel absolutely free to tell me to shut up and drink some Scotch.

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What is this whining noise?!! I'm going for a Scotch.

I'm right there with you, goatpiper. I get bursts of inspiration and then my muse flatlines. I haven't figured out what accidentally defibrillates the fickle b!itch from time to time, but I like waylander's suggestion.

It happens a lot mid-book. It does pass. It does feel a bit like getting water from a stone, but I find if I keep going, however slowly and excruciatingly, I get through it.

I was beginning to lose interest in my current WIP when I realized I didn't have an antagonist, so I added a new character. The first thing he did was get one of my MC's drunk, so there are uses for scotch after all. The new character is necessary to the story as contrast to the others, and definitely has a future as a potential villain.

If you're looking for a way to just get interested again, as an exercise/play try taking one of your characters and throwing them into someone else's universe, kind of a "what if?" situation. It's a great way to get to know your characters better by having them interact with characters you know well. I've been having lots of fun imagining my wizard on the Enterprise trying to explain to Riker (or Spock) that yes, magic really exists.

Hang in there, and good luck.

It's not just you, goatpiper. EVERY author, no matter how many books s/he has on the shelf, encounters this problem. I can't say how other people deal with this, but here's what I do when this occurs:


1. Go visit a furniture store (don't laugh--bear with me here!) Select the furniture that each of your characters might have in their house/apartment. Now . . . why did the person make those selections? What causes them to choose an abstract print over a landscape for over the couch, or a 52" plasma screen TV instead of a 24" b/w?

What often happens to cause "flailing" is that you don't know your characters well enough to understand how they will fit the crisis of the plot into their lives. Does the character live a spartan existence so that pretty much anything you do will have little impact on their life? Think about what might happen if YOU were in the character's place. You still have to pay the power bill, water the plants, feed the dog. Often, the middle of a book is incorporating the plot into their "real" life. If you miss paying the phone bill, it gets turned off. This can create a viable subplot (strange as it sounds) where the person is trying to communicate with the police, or another character and POOF! No phones.

2. Shoot the person (again, no laughing!) In any action plot, "shots fired" creates instant movement. You don't have to injure the person, but it certainly gets them racing in the other direction! If the person DOES get it, a grazing wound in an . . . odd location might require a trip to the emergency room. Once again, a subplot might ensue while a bullet is being pulled from a tender area and the character happens to meet a person, or see a person that advances the plot.

3. Flat tire/broken timing belt/fender bender. See #2 above. Complications advance a book. Let's face it, when life goes to sh!t in our REAL life, it REALLY hits the fan. Use that. Remember back to the absolute worst day of your life and transfer it to your character. Do you have time to do laundry? No. So, you start digging into the back of your closet, pulling out dress clothes before you either go buy new, sniff through the stuff in the hamper, or do a few pieces in the sink. These are all center fodder, and perfectly legitimate subplots that CAN tie back into the plot if you allow them to.

Do these help any?

Cathy C, I like the furniture store idea, and it seems applicable no matter what genre you're writing. Another thing I've done is start a sketchbook for locations in the story. It's helping me figure out the staging and what props the characters might have. I've also been asking questions like "what does this character have on the shelf next to the bed?" or "what does that character put in their pockets in the morning?" to get better ideas of their personalities. Filling out some of the specific details has been giving me ideas of things to write.

1. kill someone (a character, not a real person!)

2. write an epilogue: ask the characters to tell you what happened to them in the past few years (since the story began)...

3. kill someone

This is what works for me. I get up and go and do something else, laundry, ironing, walking my dog, anything that gets me away from my keyboard. Sometimes I lie down and try and nap. At the point it starts to become clearer and plot points and conversation pop into my head.

It works for me every time so far.

What is the worst thing that could happen to your MC?

Make it happen and see how they deal with it.

I've had the same thing happen a couple of times in my WIP. I outlined before I got too far into the story but then came up to points where my outline was vague or when there were huge gaps between scenes and I felt that something had to get my characters from scene A to scene B.

At one point I realized that I had the action conflict got resolved much too soon so that I felt I had reached the end of the novel already and hadn't even had a chance to let the spiritual conflict my MC experiences work itself out. So what I did was add a scene (They come across the villian's van) which then led me to write another several thousand words because I had to see how this discovery affected my characters, the plot, the pacing, etc.

Another thing I've used when I've been really stuck are Tarot cards. I have a whole bunch of sets (or you can find lots of places online) and pick one that seems to fit the character. I then ask the questions: "What is the main conflict facing <the character> right now? What tools does s/he need to overcome the conflict? Who can help her/him to overcome the conflict?" Same can be done with rune stones, or other divination tools.

First, and always, when in doubt, get some exercise.

Clear thy head!

Instead of Scotch, try running at the local (frozen) park or riding your bicycle, or any other activity you enjoy for exercise. Do you have Yoga DVDs? Now's your chance to use them!

Not only is this an excellent way to combat "writer butt", but it also will give you a chance to work out your frustrations physically, and return with a clear mind.

Second, if you're unsure where you're going, edit where you've been.

Third, return to your research. You will find corners in your notes and research that you didn't know existed if you didn't keep looking and re-looking.

Fourth, (thanks to Daniel Stern for this useful one) put two characters in a room, and force them to talk to each other. Rarely does it ever lead to the final product, but it can get you through the bumps in the same way a furniture store can, without having to deal with pushy salespeople.

Fifth, read more books. Read more books. Read. Read some more.

Sixth, are you married? Have cool friends? If you're bummed out and lost and beyond repair return to your friends and family and re-connect with the people that undoubtedly inspire you to write in the first place.

goatpiper said:

How many of you out there get to points in your WIPs where you find yourself floundering like crazy?

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I think every writer goes through periods when their work isn't speaking to them, so don't feel alone. Whenever I get stuck with a particular chapter, I write around it. Very often, this exercise will kick start the chapter that was blocking me. There are also times that I simply walk away for a short time. A breath of fresh air recycles my brain cells. When I don't think so hard, the words flow.

The important thing is not to give up. If you have a story bursting inside you, then honor the compulsion and do some serious BIC.

Failing everything, take Maestro's advice and kill someone.

Great post, Cathy C

Ah! But you're thinking too small! Yes, it's the "worst thing". But you want to give your character the "worst day." Big things, little things, LOTS of things get in the way of the character finding and dealing with the main event. The event is the "there". The other stuff is the "getting there."
Let me use an example from my current WIP. It's female-centric, first person. She can see ghosts. I know who the villain is (actually, I know who BOTH villains are--one human, one non-corporal). She needs to get from point A (learning how to train her talent) to point B (saving the world--as it were.) I got stuck with a transition scene. Transitions are always the hardest part for me. I have THIS great scene, and then THAT great scene, but I have to get the character from here to there.

So, it's about five o'clock in the evening and the next scene doesn't start until nine o'clock the next morning. Sure, I could just cut scene and start the next chapter. It would be fine for the plot. But it doesn't advance the character a bit. She would just be reacting from event to event, but the reader doesn't know WHY or HOW things might affect her later. So, I went to the furniture store. I selected all of her furniture and then started to think about WHY she picked them. She likes wrought iron furniture with slate or stone topped tables. But why? Where would she have first seen something that grabbed her attention? A grandparent's house? A second-hand store? No, how about an old church? Okay, so--obvious reasons aside--why would she be at a church as a child? She can see GHOSTS! It's the main plot. Could she as a child? Possibly. Would her parents/grandparents freak out if she wandered off into the basement of an old church? Probably. What if one of THEM saw a ghost, and their little girl interacting with it? They'd probably REALLY freak out, huh? They would either press her to forget it happened, or bribe her out of remembering it, and never go back to the church.

Now, what would happen if the parents forgot about that incident and decided to hold a reunion at the old church? Heroine doesn't really remember the event if it was before age six or seven. There's something there, nibbling at the back of her head, but it's not quite a memory. All of a sudden, there's this brand new subplot with a reunion and the church, that can BOTH help her get a handle on her abilities, resolve a part of her past, AND complicate her life further. It gets her from the beginning to the end and deepens the character immensely.

Does that make sense?

i am eternally grateful to the spirits who have led me to this thread.

for at least a month i've been feeling very lonely in this process i call "writing a novel". i decided to switch POV's from 1st to 3rd person and started from scratch. but now, 1/4 in, i am stuck. i thought i knew where it needs to go but this draft is much darker in tone and stronger in detail, which takes more time, energy, blood and entrails to write.

i'm happy with what i've written so far, and i recently had an amazing revelation about the grand finale. however, i am stuck in this grey area of getting to the end. argh!

goatpiper; i feel as though you have crawled inside my brain and expressed my frustrations more eloquently than i could ever conjured them.

cathy; your posts have inspired me to look beyond the reality and bring the 'fantasy' into unexpected places.

aadams73; i'm a napper too! sometimes i can't bear to look at the empty page so i try to fall asleep thinking about my characters.

to all of you wonderful souls...thank you! after reading this thread, i feel less isolated in my obsessive fury. these novels WILL be written...

Flounder

If I find myself floundering, not knowing where to go or what to do next, which is, thank God, extremely rare, it always means I made a serious goof somewhere earlier in the novel. I wasn't paying attention and let the novel wander off onto a dead end road.

When this happens, I can finish the novel by forcing my way ahead, but it won't be a good novel. I have to go back and find where I screwed up.

It's almost always somewhere in the first fifty pages. If I get the opening right, I do not flounder, do not ever reach a point where I don't know where to go or what to do next.

For me, the opening is everything. If it's right, every scene thereafter follows the scene before, is dictated by the scene before. This means that if it's wrong, nothing is ever going to be on track again.

But while the wrong turn nearly always happens in those first fifty pages, and while it may often be the wrong first five or ten pages, a wrong turn can happen anywhere in the novel, and when it does, forcing my way ahead is simply not an option. I have to go back, whether it's two scenes or two hundred pages, find the wrong turn, and get back on track.

But if I get the opening right, I almost never hit a point where there's any question at all of where to go or what to do at any point.