You can't trap me!
I refer only to myself. I wrote myself into a bit of a corner yesterday, and stupidly, didn't write myself out of it before quitting for the night. I would make that my first tip, if I'm qualified to give such a thing. Don't leave yourself in a bad spot, where you don't know what's coming next, or have a problem to solve. While you might think, "I just need some time to think this over," that's exactly not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is that you'll say, "Well, I don't have a good enough solution to this yet. I'll start later," then you'll put off writing again, because your "solution" still isn't up to snuff.
Just write. Write even if it doesn't make any sense, or if you think it's complete crap, and will throw it away later. But move your story on, even if you have to completely cut the scene off and start somewhere else. Then write for a bit, until you can stop when you have some momentum, and are excited to start again.
2 Comments:
Totally useful advice. I was stuck because I needed to age my main character by at least 6 years and didn't write because I was worried about glossing over some things. Finally, I pushed ahead and broke through to the next part of the book and like I've said, the current section is my favorite.
When I started, I had very clear ideas about 3 of my four main characters and how they behaved and interacted. The fourth character, basically shipped over from a really crappy short story I did in college, was very vague and I dreaded adding her to the story (even though I felt it was necessary). She's quickly become one of the quirkier personalities I've created and her family is so fun to write about, I don't want to leave them in the background (as the plot says I have to).
But yeah, I think eingy posted something about this a week ago and I've made it a point to end in the middle of a section as opposed to the end of one.
I have to say, I LOVED how Seppo worked himself out of that corner. It was funny, endearing, and the characters involved really came to life in that scene, especially the main character, who revealed a side of himself that had never before been glimpsed, yet it was still believeably consistent with his overall character.
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