What scene(s) did you have the hardest time writing?

Death scenes. All my characters are interconnected. If even the villain dies (which he does) the impact affects everyone; emotionally or otherwise.

meowzbark said:

Serious scenes.

Lame jokes keep sneaking into my dialogue.

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I feel your pain. Smart-assery always pops in at the most inopportune moments for me. I'm just writing along and BAM: smart-ass comment.

The opening scenes, I find difficult to make something that the audience will want to read on from, to me it's like a puzzle and I can see it in full on the lid but inside I don't know how to put it all together.
Another difficulty would be descriptions.

Romantic scenes. They always make me feel self-conscious and I worry about veering into cheesy or melodramatic territory.

The horrible breakup scene. I've never had one like what I've written, so it was hard not to make it too cheesy.

First chapters are very difficult for me. They get the write, rewrite, rewrite, and try again routine.

Emotionally, my hardest scenes have been killing a character I liked and more recently, a molestation scene. The scene is essential to the story, but I wanted it as short as possible. It was difficult to write and emotionally trying. He was such a nice little boy. Now he's a tortured little soul. That makes me sad. Here's hoping I don't have to give it the Chapter One treatment.

It makes me quite happy to see that there are a few other people who hate writing romantic scenes. I hate writing them to the point where I try to avoid them, even when I know it's inevitable. (Dear characters, you do not actually like each other, so you are not going to talk about your romantic feelings, nor act in romantic ways and certainly not kiss. Or have sex. What is that again? Lalala I can't hear you. Please understand. I don't care that you want to. Love, your author.) I feel so awkward writing them.

I've also written some emotionally wrenching, leaving-me-in-tears scenes. But I don't actively avoid those, like the romantic scenes.

angeliz2k said:

I feel your pain. Smart-assery always pops in at the most inopportune moments for me. I'm just writing along and BAM: smart-ass comment.

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I generally leave my smart-ass comments in, but that's because that's the voice of two of my characters (a centuries old angel/vampire and a youth librarian).

It's actually the part where one character whose let say play a very significant role and you could think as one of the hero or heroine but in the end you have to kill. ...that is so tough for the writer you know

I agree with the comments about writing the opening and hooking readers straight away, but I've read plenty of books where the first chapter wasn't great but the novel blew me away!

Romantic scenes, and sad scenes in terms off difficulty for me. I slow to like, 10 words per minute, and after rereading there is never any affect whatsoever on me.

I've had 3 deaths in my story of characters' family/friends. None of them seem sad.

For example, "His strength left him as he slumped to the ground, weeping silently" then he basically grows fatigued and goes into a sleep/unconscious thing.

No affect whatsoever on anyone who has read my book so far, but I agree with them unfortunately.

Scenes with more than about three characters. Get a crowd into the book and I panic.

Also, I had great trouble with the ending of a book recently because neither I nor the protag wanted it to end the way it had to end. Eventually I forced both of us to the ending, but it was hard work. After that I had to go back and fill in bits I'd skipped because I couldn't write them. Not even sad bits, necessarily, just bits I couldn't get to because they were stepping stones to that ending.

I struggle writing when about scenes showing people happy or just getting on with life. So once the MC has conquered, got the guy all then what? Does ride into the sunset? I struggle with conveying normality as my writing is really motivated by strife and conflict.

Layla Nahar said:

Every scene. For me just sitting down and writing is hard. Everything creative I do, just doing it is really hard.

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Never give up, and know that other people have the same problems' hopefully, the people of the forum have offered support.

The hardest scene I've ever written has to be reunion of my MC with his wife and kids after a year at war. I'm not a parent, and my... 'experiences' with romance haven't given me a lot of insight into those interactions. It's doubly difficult since I'm writing from first person. Thankfully, the erotic scene was much easier.

Next time I'm just having my MC be a recluse who goes on journeys with a possibly imaginary friend. Less romantic stuff that way.

As I read all the posts in this thread I kept thinking: Yes, that. That, too. Comes down to writing is just hard. Makes me wonder why I do it. I must like torturing myself.

Swordfish said:

If you mean hard because it involves writing things I don't like/am not good at, then scenes where there's little dialogue but more action I find challenging. I love writing dialogue and it's so difficult to plow through paragraphs of action/thought.

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Same here. I wonder why that is. I have the last half of a chapter and the first half of the following chapter in the last 1/4 of my WIP that's nothing but narrative, and I tell ya, I broke into a cold sweat just thinking about it. I seriously thought about altering the plot, just so my MC wouldn't be alone that long.

Scenes that please agents and editors. I've been told that mine are too disturbing, violent, complex, bizarre, indulgent, hard-to-follow, and uninteresting to appeal to them. A number of non-agent and non-editor readers have said the same or similar. One such reader is from AW. He liked the first three sentences of my first novel, but that was about it, and he declined to read much beyond them. It was just too weird for him to take, as I had a feeling it would be. He likened it to Pynchon, whose weirdness he likewise cannot stomach.

Needless to say I'm taking his and the others' criticism to heart and working my hardest to overcome the problems their critiques have identified in my writing. I have a long way to go, but with diligence and honesty on my part, I just may get there.

I have no problems killing or torturing my characters. Just throwing that out there.

Right now I'm trying to write a fancy dinner scene in the middle of my military space opera and I'm seriously overestimating my abilities as a writer. I want it to be like My Dinner With Andre-ish, but what I want and what I can do are two different animals.

A particular scene in the last third of the current project where most of the players are in play. I knew what had to happen by the end of it, but I just couldn't make it feel right.

If you mean emotionally hard, none so far.

If you mean mechanically hard, I can't do sex scenes or fight scenes. I have a hard time making them engaging. When I try to go into physical description, it becomes a series of actions that are just clunky and awkward. When I try to move away from physical and go into the MC reactions, I feel like I end up with something people will question because when would my MC have time to think of all that crap in the middle of a fight?

Yeah. I'm slogging through a fight scene now and just want to finish it so I can move on to stuff I'm good at! My crit partners can help me fix my fight scenes later.

I have yet to actually need a sex scene in my wip. I lucked out on this one. But I will in subsequent books and I don't look forward to it. I really don't know how I'll get through it.

PeterHill said:

The opening scenes, I find difficult to make something that the audience will want to read on from, to me it's like a puzzle and I can see it in full on the lid but inside I don't know how to put it all together.

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I have this problem too. I tend to just jump straight into a scene and go from there, and not worry about the beginning. Later on it'll hit me how to start the story.

I have a hard time writing scenes that aren't packed with action. I seriously don't like lulls in my story even if they're just to give the reader a break and lead you into the next scene. They're boring so I tend to not give them as much description as I do my other scenes where something exciting is happening.

Midian said:

If you mean emotionally hard, none so far.

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Yup. My excitement for writing and structuring scenes eclipses potential emotional trauma.

Mechanically, I have a hard time writing good fight scenes. I just suck at them.

Though the hardest scenes for me are the ones where my characters confront their demons/emotions, accept their failures, and find someway to carry on. I find them very draining and way too close to home.

Interesting you'd ask. This hardly pertains to the precise question, but I've had a devil of a time revising my novel (which needs a complete make-over).

It's hard to explain, but what I had was three dynamic people interacting with a terrorist, who makes his move in the second half of the book. But from then on, the story is about the interaction between the terrorist and the president's national security advisor. So now I have to go back and remove the deep background on the other three characters and create scenes that establish the NSA and her relationship with said terrorist.

I am finding it hard to summon the oooomph needed.

I have a really difficult time writing the scenes where my depressed characters are deep in the self-loathing. It's hard to get out of that morose vibe once I'm in it, and I'm a very happy-go-lucky person, so when I have to write those scenes, it takes me to a part of my brain that doesn't get much action and I hate it.