Basically, I’m experiencing three different kinds of Stuck with the three main stories I’m working on.—E. Beck
Summarizing the three types you described in last week’s comments:
- Stuck because you don’t want to work on this story right now.
- Stuck because there’s a major time jump/transition to get over.
- Stuck because you are unsure how to handle a known upcoming scene.
Looking at that, my first question would be, how much of #1 is due to the interaction between #2 and #3? Because the “don’t wannas” usually happen for a reason, and not knowing how to do something that you know has to come next is a really common reason for avoiding working on a story. Other common possibilities are: The writer knows that a particular scene comes next, and they hate writing that kind of scene (character death, action, lots of emotional angst, romance/sex, council scene, etc.). The writer has a lot of important stuff going on in real life and working on this story is starting to feel like just one more annoying obligation, and the writer Does Not Need This on top of everything else. The writer has made a huge leap forward in skill level for some reason, and the story now looks frustratingly amateurish, and wouldn’t it be better to start over with something new that’s actually good instead of trying to fix this terrible old thing? The writer is bogged down in the Miserable Middle, which looks endless, and doing anything else is more appealing, even filling out tax forms. It’s a gorgeous day and it would be a shame not to go to the park/beach/arboretum/hiking trails.
Knowing why one doesn’t want to work on a story makes it easier to judge whether simply powering through will work sufficiently well. If you’re stuck because it’s a nice day, or because the next scene is something you hate writing, or you’re stuck in the Miserable Middle, powering through often does the job. Powering through when one doesn’t know how to do what has to come next often doesn’t work, unless part of “powering through” is devoted to learning the missing skill. The best response to dire real-life events depends on how dire the real events and obligations are—a writer who writes even partly as an escape may find powering-on works really well as a respite from some kinds of real life catastrophes, while other dire events require so much brain power that writing has to be put on hold for a while. (Basically, if it seems to help one cope, do it; if it’s making matters worse, try pausing for a while.)
In this specific case, I’m guessing that being unsure about handling #2 and #3 stuck-ness is, at the very least, a contributing factor to #1, so they’re a good place to start.
For #2, I’d suggest looking at the rest of the story you want to tell, and seeing how and where this time-skip fits into the structure. For instance, if the skip occurs only a couple of chapters in, you have a different situation from a time-skip that occurs after 30,000 or 50,000 words. You also have a different situation if the story breaks down easily into episodes. If the episodes are short enough, and self-contained enough, the story may work by structuring it as if it were a fix-up novel, stringing the episodes together with a frame.
A lot depends on the spacing of the divisions. If the overall story works as three or four episodes with major time-skips between them, making each episode a separate section can work very nicely. If you want to emphasize the sections, inserting a short interlude between them can set off the break while still connecting the parts (excerpts from imaginary history books or newspaper articles can work well, as can excerpts from the protagonist’s journal or memoir, or letters to/from a different character). If there’s a single major time-skip within the first 10,000 or so words, you may be looking at a prologue, or you may be looking at events that need to be conveyed in flashbacks during the central story.
On the other hand, if there are a lot of short time-skips and one or two longer ones, treating all of them as straightforward transitions that just happen to vary in length from a few hours to a couple of years can work well, if one is consistent. The trick is to remember to identify where and when the viewpoint character is in the first couple of sentences of each time-skip (and if the story is multiple-viewpoint, which character is currently the POV). This can be a matter of stating “Even after three years as head of neurosurgery at Metro General Hospital, Jane felt a thrill as she opened the office door with her nameplate on it,” or it can be as subtle as ending one chapter with Jane looking out the window at autumn leaves falling from a cherry tree and starting the next one still looking out the window, but this time at the same tree in full spring bloom.
Speaking of breaks, there are four types: a scene break, a chapter break, a section break, and a break between novels in a series. Usually, the longer and more unusual the time-skip, the higher the level of the break (though the reverse is not always true). That is, novels in a series may have years or decades (or longer) between them, but they can also have mere moments between one book ending with a character walking down the hall and the next book starting with the character’s boss opening his office door and yelling, “George, get back here! We have an emergency!” Also, context matters. If most of your scene breaks cover hours or days, you probably want a chapter break if you’re going to skip a couple of weeks at one go, but if most of your scene breaks cover a couple of weeks, you may not want a chapter break unless you’re skipping months or years.
Scene breaks can be done with either a space break (blank line between scenes) or a narrative transition (a paragraph or a sentence between scenes, e.g., “He left in a rage and drove to the bank, where he barged into Hans’s office. ‘What is this about?’ he demanded, slamming the letter down on the desk.” And we’ve covered the half-hour drive to the bank in half a sentence, and we’re into the next scene).
And I am already over my word count for this post, so I’m leaving #3 for next time, and the question about unique characters for next week or the week after. It would help if you could give an example of a character you think is unique that other people don’t.
I think I’ve mentioned before that the three ways I get Stuck are:
1. Static friction. If I can make myself start writing, it’s much easier to keep writing once I start.
2. Wrong turn. Something in the previously-written parts is wrong and has sent the story off in a (subtly or drastically) wrong direction. My back-brain has gone on a sitdown strike and I can’t continue until I’ve gone back and fixed the wrong stuff I’ve written.
3. Need to scout ahead. Before I can write the next scene, chapter, or section, I need to work out what happens, choreographing the scene, outlining the chapter or section, or otherwise doing midwriting such as stopping to figure out just how the villain has an opportunity to distem the doshes at this point and why he chooses to take it. (This is a lot like the #3 in the above post.)
As a pet peeve, I don’t like seeing or using a simple blank line as a scene break; I always want something stronger and less likely to get lost. E.g. the traditional dinkus of three asterisks, or some other centered, symmetrical ornament used in its place.
1. Inertia can be a good friend or a dreadful enemy…
2. So go back and fix it. Not a whole rewrite, just the missing/messed up bits.
3. Event horizons are part of the process for most novelists.
And the three asterisks or ornament that marks a space-break is something the publishers decide on as part of book design. You sometimes have a better chance of getting them in the finished book if you express your preference to your editor, but it’s ultimately the publisher’s decision. It’s not a bad idea to include them in your manuscript, as there are a lot of small things (font size, deleting a line or two) that can push a space-only scene break to the top or bottom of a page, where it is easy for a book designer to miss if there isn’t something to call attention to it. Odds are that they won’t end up in the same place in the e-book or hardcopy (because font size and line length are rarely the same as in manuscript), of course.
The fourth “meta” way I get stuck is when I can’t figure out which of the three ways I’m currently stuck – or worse, when I do ‘figure it out’ but get it wrong.
This is a very helpful post. Thank you so much!
I think I (mostly) have #2 figured out now. It’s slowly transforming into #1 because I’m bored, but that’s a much simpler matter to solve now.
As for the characters…
I keep getting a hankering to write a story with a classic Fantasy Rogue as the protagonist, except that I haven’t finished any stories with that sort of character in them.
This means that I have probably a dozen characters who all fit the “Fantasy Rogue” mold in one way or another, and who feel unique to me because their names are different and I’ve written pieces of unrelated stories about them, but who, when you put them down on paper, look exactly like each other to an outsider.
And unfortunately, the argument, “But look! This one is named Risk, that one is named Vixen. They’re *completely* different people!” doesn’t really stand up under pressure. They are all the same character, but they feel different to me because I *want* them to feel different. If I put Risk and Vixen in the same situation, they’d both react exactly the same way, and I don’t want to admit it.
And, after a bunch of story pieces and character iterations, I’ve accidentally trained my brain into creating the same type of character whenever I get a new story idea. How do I break it out of this mold so I can write people who are *actually* different people?
Assign random, arbitrary traits. As an exercise.
For instance, the Olympian trick: assign one rogue a trait like Dionysus, another like Apollo, another like Ares. And write them accordingly.
It’s one of those things where there’s no substitute for practice.
For me, I build cultures first, so everyone strts similar. But then I look at things formative to character, their traumas, differing values. They start to diverge on these things.
Eventually, of course, the only way to master a skill is to practice it, however badly. Some powering through and horrible writing may be required.
Another way of following up Mary’s “arbitrary, random traits” approach is to seize on something that comes up during writing and decide to make *that* part of the character’s signature flair. Maybe you find you’ve had them use a seagoing metaphor; give them a backstory that involves a lot of sailing and have them use such imagery often. Or they use some particular way of solving a problem, and you decide you can make that kind of solution characteristic of the person — and perhaps take notice of it when they suddenly have to use some other method, or another character calls them out on their habit.