Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated June 27, 2013 - 8:36am

So I'm having a problem I've not run into before. There is a  scene I just can't seem to write. I can write other projects, I'm not disgusted (or otherwise emotionally blocked), I'm not disinterested, the book needs it to work, other parts of the same project are going fine (editing, writing other parts of this project), and I know (roughly) what happens (both in the part I'm having trouble with and the rest of the book). For some reason it just isn't happening. 

I was wondering how others deal with this.

Matt Attack's picture
Matt Attack from Richmond, Va. is reading As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner June 27, 2013 - 9:17am

Write past it. Sometimes I'll come to a passage I can't nail down so I put (?????) and keep moving on as though I have wrote it. The important thing is to finish. Then you can go back. Try not to put too much importance on it either, or as Hemingway said: “The first draft of anything is shit.”


 

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane June 27, 2013 - 4:52pm

Make something, anything, happen.

This happened to me last year in Nano. I was stuck and didn't know where I was taking things, but I knew I had to write something. In frustration, I just threw my hands in the air and had the "monster" of the story invade an otherwise unrelated scene. It just showed up and scared the shit out of/prompted action from the protagonists (I was able to work in how the "monster" managed to make said appearance in my revision). Before I knew it I had written myself out of my logjam and had blown past the necessary word totals for that day and kept going for another 2k words on top of that.

I guess the moral of the story, when in doubt, blow something up. You can always insert the explosives later.

 

Tim Johnson's picture
Tim Johnson from Rockville, MD is reading Notes From a Necrophobe by T.C. Armstrong June 28, 2013 - 12:53pm

To contrast with Matt and John, I stop. I take a step back, and maybe I'll work on something else. I think it depends on what your problem is in each instance. For me, I tend to force characters to do things that aren't natural to them, and I do this for the sake of the point I'm trying to make with the story. When I'm forcing things, it's like trying to put a puzzle together with pieces that don't fit.

So some distance lets me come back with fresh eyes and see the story as it is, not as I want it to be, and sometimes the most obvious action is the most natural. Maybe you didn't want to go that way before and were fighting it.

I actually just recovered from something that was bothering me for a couple weeks, and it came to me while I was trying to go to sleep. A part in a story just didn't make sense. Then, I remembered, he has a gun in his pocket. I was saving it for later, but what if I didn't fight that anymore? It would be totally natural that he'd pull it out here, and it would amp up the action sooner.

I've yet to write it, but I think it's going to work out and make the rest of the story work better than before (because I had written it out and forced something else, and because I forced it, I now have to rewrite a lot of what I worked so hard on before; also, that attachment had made it harder for me to do what was natural for my characters and, ultimately, pressing forward had been a mistake for me).

Renfield's picture
Renfield from Hell is reading 20th Century Ghosts June 28, 2013 - 2:03pm

^I think that's the old Raymond Chandler line "when in doubt, have somebody blast through the door holding a gun."

If you've got everything you need plotted out you could try the "exploding scene" thing. You put everything you need down in a bulletpoint outline and then work the scene point-by-point turning them into sentences and then paragraphs and then eventually into a whole tied-in scene. It takes away the hard part of crapping out the writing part, but then the real work is reading it over and over to make it as consistent and energetic as you would get with a scene you're actually excited to write.

Chacron's picture
Chacron from England, South Coast is reading Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb June 28, 2013 - 2:24pm

The first thing I do if I encounter the scene I just can't write is have a drink. In my early twenties writing under the influence worked all the time. Nowdays I don't often do it, because I find I'm better at the keyboard sober, but if there's that one scene that I really can't nail then I find I need a release from myself in order to write something. It might not be good writing, but at least if I've necked a couple of scotches and done whatever the release powered out of me then I've got something to work with. If it sucks then at least I can figure out why and keep re-working until I get something I like.

Carly Berg's picture
Carly Berg from USA is reading Story Prompts That Work by Carly Berg is now available at Amazon June 30, 2013 - 12:20pm

I would set a timer for an hour and write it anyway, quickly, off the top of your head. Then, however awful or rough it turns out, you have something to work with, which means you are "unstuck." I think...