Process feels unique and individual, because it is, just as the cottonwood tree in my front yard is unique and individual, different from all other cottonwoods and even more different from other species of trees. But just as all trees have roots and bark and perform photosynthesis in their leaves or needles, there are fundamental similarities in different creative processes. We all have to make it up at some point.
Making it up – whether one is making up the beginning or the end, the plot or the characters – involves looking at two different areas. The first is what is going on in the book; the second is what is going on in the author. When they’re both cruising along without needing much attention, writing is usually fast and relatively easy. When they get out of sync, or when one is moving along fine but the other isn’t, things get sticky. When one or the other stalls out completely, writing becomes a painful uphill battle, which often ends with both areas freezing solid, which is a textbook prescription for writer’s block.
What this means is that when a writer is having huge problems moving forward, the basic problem-solving process questions need to be looked at twice, once for the story and/or the characters in the book, and once for the author. Looking for reasons why the characters in a story don’t seem to be getting anywhere on their quest for fame and/or the McGuffin is not going to be much help if the author is so stressed out by some personal drama that they can’t face writing the argument that’s supposed to come next.
The first process question I usually use is some variation of “What is true right now?” That is, what is true in my life in general (e.g., stress levels, how well I’ve been sleeping/eating, why, exciting things, current worries), but also what is true about my relationship to the story I’m writing (whether I’m happy with the direction it’s been going, whether I’m worried that I’ll have to drop back and rewrite the last sixteen chapters [usually, if I am seriously worrying about this, the answer is yes, I am going to have to rewrite everything], when was the last time I looked at my original plot outline/idea to see how far I’ve wandered from it, whether I’m still having fun [and if not, why not]). And then, what is true in the story at the point it’s at – what the characters have been through so far, what they know, what they think they know, what I think I know about where they’ve been and how they got to this point and where they’re going (which may not end up being true by the time the story is done being written, but it’s true now, as of when I’m looking at these questions).
This step is basically gathering up all the material I currently have to work with, inside the story and outside it. Much of the time, it’s not a deliberate, systematic examination; it’s often more of a mulling over everything repeatedly. The more stuck I am, though, the more helpful I find actually writing out everything I know is true about my current real-life situation and the characters’ current story situation. For me, the underlying story problem is almost always that I am missing some key piece of information (or simply haven’t recognized it), and I find it easier to spot the holes when I have a list to look at.
The next step is to define the problem, and again, that happens on both levels. A lot of writers start by looking at the problems the characters are facing, and never get around to looking at possible problems outside the story, but this is a mistake. At the absolute minimum, there is generally an outside problem of “I haven’t written anything on this in weeks and I am stressing out about it,” but there are often real-life problems ranging from the relatively minor (“The washer is broken and I am out of clean clothes”) to full-blown crisis (“The lab test came back and I have Stage 4 cancer and chemotherapy starts tomorrow”).
Defining the problem is usually the most helpful if one is extremely specific. (“Usually” because I have known a few writers for whom “I don’t know what happens next” and “I don’t have time” really do stimulate their backbrains more than “The hero is stuck on a sandbar in a flooding river with a broken leg and no boat” or “I signed up for six courses this semester and then my boss fired half the staff so I need to work overtime and I don’t have enough time to sleep and study, let alone write fiction.”)
Once you know what you have to work with, and you have some idea what the problems are, you can look at what you have tried (which obviously hasn’t worked), and try to figure out why what you have tried hasn’t worked. Then you look at what you haven’t tried, and why you haven’t tried it. On the real-life level, maybe you tried getting up half an hour early to write, but couldn’t drag yourself out of bed and ended up even more short on sleep in addition to getting no writing done. On the story level, maybe you tried to write in a conveniently loose canoe, but it just didn’t feel right, and neither did the search helicopter showing up at the last minute. Things you haven’t tried: asking your boss for time off, dropping a class or two, looking for a different job; letting the hero be swept away by the flood and washed up somewhere else, letting the hero drown, having him rescued by aliens.
Some of the alternatives will be ridiculous – Aliens? Really? – but think about them anyway, because they might spark some non-ridiculous idea that would actually be useful. Also, the “why” part is important, especially with the real-life stuff, because for me, quite often the reason why I haven’t tried something is that I don’t want to give up and/or admit that I can’t do it all.
The last process question I use is “What do I want to have happen?” For this one, I personally find specifics more useful for the real-life level (“I want to be able to write for two hours every other Saturday” is better for me than “I want more time”), but more general answers often work as a better springboard for the story level, at least initially.
I think I should take a day, and sit down with this post and the novel that’s been at halfway for five months and counting, and see what answers I come up with. Or at least which questions really resonate.
I honestly don’t have this problem anymore, but I certainly used to. I have dozens of old half-written stories where I ran into a process problem. (The earliest ones are handwritten on legal pads, that’s how old they are.)
I found the cure to the problem the hard way. After going through some experiences that left me burningly angry, I know what kind of story will sustain me, that I won’t have process issues with. I always make sure one of the fundamental conflicts for the protagonists is something that I can’t let go of.
Which isn’t to say everything goes swimmingly. The novel I’m currently revising got pushed aside a couple of times before I realized I was emphasizing a realistic theme over a spooky one, and the latter would be a much better choice. Several weeks of excisions and rewrites later, I’m almost done with the first pass…
Posts like this are why I read this blog.
For me, it’s almost always an outside problem. Usually I have time or money, but not both.