Writer's Workshop #16: Stuck in a Rut · 4:55am Mar 28th, 2015
What an oddly appropriate topic for a post that's two weeks late. I'm sure literally every writer has been here at one point or another. Whether you've planned the entire story out or just write scene to scene, you've gotten to a point where you have no idea how to get from Point A to Point B. I mentioned once that, as soon as I could get Twilight and Jade on a train in "A Call to Vespers," I could write the next section. Now, oddly enough, in "Mother and Child" I'm having trouble getting Pinkie off of a train. Come to think of it, my writers' block in "The Alice War" involves getting Twilight onto a train, too. ...What is up with me and trains?!
Anyways, I've gotten way off topic. What do you do when you can't figure out how to write the connecting tissue between two important scenes? Well, the most obvious solution is to just jump straight to the next scene. Is it important for us to understand how the characters get where they need to go? If so, what's important about it? Write that. If not, why not just skim over the parts in between and get to what actually matters? Here's an example of what I mean. One of the people whose story I was looking at was having trouble figuring out how to write the part in between the characters chasing down a bad guy and ultimately capturing them. Capturing the guy wasn't the main drive of the story, though; it was just a small little complication. So the suggestion I offered was, "Why not make it easy for them?" Instead of trying to script some big fight scene, why not just give them an easy win? Like I said, it wasn't important, so there wasn't any reason for it to be any more complicated than that.
Okay, but maybe you do want to use that part in between for some purpose or another. You just don't know how to properly create that connection. Here's what I suggest. First, open up your favorite word processor and set your story to the side. Next, write down these four things:
1. What does your Main Character know? What pertinent facts are on their mind right now? What's their understanding of the situation?
2. What does your Main Character think? What can they piece together to understand things better? How do they think about the Goal?
3. What can your Main Character do? What actions can they actually perform to move the story forward? What's in their skill set?
4. What does your Main Character want? What will catch their attention? If they have nothing else to do, what will they search out?
What these questions will do is help you understand who your character is right now. If they know that there's a mystic gem in the temple, and they want to collect mystic gems, and they have the capacity to go to the temple and get said gem... it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens next. Of course, you also can't forget the negatives of those. If the character doesn't know that the hallway is trapped, and they think it's the only way to get to the gem, then they'll go through and trip the trap.
Okay, so you know who your character is based off of all those questions. What if you still don't know how to write the next part? Well... why not try a bunch of different things? This is why I told you to put your story to the side. Open up a new document and just write something that fulfills what you're trying to do. Don't worry if it's good or not, just try and obey those four points above. Got something written? Good, now hit Enter twice and write something else. Now do it again. Now do it one more time. Try a bunch of different options and see what feels the best. Once you've got something that really sings, copy-paste it into your main document. Make sure it fits and makes sense.
So how do I get Pinkie off of the train? Well, if I wanted to, I could just start the next chapter right where it matters. But there are some important things I want her to see first. Before she can get to the tower, she has to pass through the town. She'll want to take in all the suffering and find ponies who can help her. She doesn't know much about the Dark Paradise, so maybe something should happen that takes advantage of that lack of knowledge. Hmm... a bunch of slaves fawning over her because she looks like a unicorn? ...Huh. I think I may have actually come up with something. Proof that it works, eh?
