I'm so very glad you guys can't see what I'm writing right now. It's bad. It's very bad.
Well, there's only one cure, and y'all know what it is.
Keep.
Going.
I come to the end of a paragraph, and there's no obvious direction to go from there. No momentum. Will Brian and Evelyn arrive on time for supper, or will they be late? Who can stand the tension???
The scene has a point, so I'm going to have to just grit my teeth and drag myself through it. One-sentence paragraphs, a list of who did what, and then who said what. It's as painful to write as it is to read. And then - magic! - a character does something unexpected. A part of the setting bursts suddenly into full color. Action, reaction, imagination, interest - a scent, a spark.
And finally, a decent paragraph.
2 comments:
One thing I've noticed if I'm having trouble with a scene is that later I realize I was missing some crucial element and once I figure out what it is, the whole thing comes together much smoother.
Of course, I almost always see it after the fact and rarely notice that something's missing while I'm struggling.
Hope you've got it worked out now!
Yes, that's so true. I've struggled theough scenes to discover that it's garbage and I don't actually need it for the story, but I had to write it first to know that. Process, process.
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