It’s been said that falling off a cliff isn’t so bad, it’s that sudden stop at the end. A writer once described the process of writing a novel as jumping out of an airplane with a big ball of yarn and knitting needles and trying to knit a parachute on the way down.
I’m experiencing something similar. This week I hit the climax, the key point of my entire novel. It was fun! Woohoo! Twenty months of writing pay off! Cue the coolness I’ve been planning since–
WHAM!
I ran smack into a wall. I set up the conflict fairly well, but I can’t seem to find a satisfactory and realistic way to resolve it. The good guys are in a pickle, and the first several ideas I’ve come up with are terribly cliched. Several others I discarded because it would require the bad guys to get a sudden case of the stupids. Nothing I’ve come up with so far seems terribly satisfying, and after all this work I’d really like my ending to be satisfying. I want the good guys win because they were good, not because the bad guys were just incapable of sticking the landing.
I’ve made it this far by tossing out my detailed outline and writing from memory of where I wanted the story to go, but being willing to go with felt right at the moment. It’s worked well. I’ve on the whole stayed true to my high-level structure, but the details have been stronger because they were made up in response to the unfolding of the story. But I suspect I’ve reached the point where I’m going to need to sit down and plan my way out of this. It’s time for the good guys to step up and be awesome guys. And it’s time for the bad guys to fail only because the good guys were just a little more awesome. Nothing I’ve got so far approaches that.
I’m still figuring out what my writing process is. It could be it’s different for every story. I don’t quite like just free-writing and seeing where I end up–I end up with a mess that needs a lot of work to clean up. But I’ve also found that a lot of outlining is too restrictive and takes the fun out of it. Heavy outlining feels like I’ve already written the novel, so why bother going back and writing it again just to add set-dressing? Somewhere in the middle seems to work best…so far. But now I’ve got to find a good ending. I can either keep writing and tossing out endings, or I can sit down and plan it out. My instincts tell me the latter is more likely to work here.
Time for some woodshedding, as we’d say in my musician days.
Maybe it is time to come up with e Dr. Who quirk, a useless bauble that the main character carries for neurotic reasons, and has no special power, but that is the wild card that wasn’t planned for and starts a chain …
At the moment no such bauble exists. If necessary, I’m prepared to go back and hang some more guns on the mantle. I’m hoping I can do it with the arsenal already hanging there.
Not having any writing experience, but having listened to a lot of Writing Excuses and having spent a few nights at a Holiday Inn Express… have you tried writing it from the bad guy’s perspective, just to see what happens?
Not yet. There are scenes from the bad guys’ perspective, which do provide me some rather interesting mantle-guns to work with. I am leaning toward having one of them’s established weakness come into play in disasterous ways.
I admit to having some curiosity as to how a Holiday Inn Express figures in here… 🙂
Does someone have something already documented as being there that you haven’t considered yet? And one does not have to be “stupid” or “incompetent” to be not perfect in planning or execution.
And, cliched though it is, good ol’ bad guy back stabbing over greed … though that DOES lean toward stupid.
Well, I’ve established throughout the novel that the two bad guys do not get along and are cooperating begrudgingly, but no, I won’t go for the backstab, per se. A little mutiny, perhaps, but not outright backstab.
I think I’ve got it worked out now. No new guns needed on the mantle, but I may have to go back and clean a few of them to make sure they don’t misfire. And I may still revise the resolution if I come up with something better. But this isn’t bad.
Hopefully, I’ve been of some minimal help. If I have, I will demand full co-author credit … 😉
So you’ll pay half the costs to get it published? Thom, you may want to take him up on that. 🙂
notice, I didn’t say when …
Well, since this one is likely never going to see the outside of my trunk, let alone publication, there’s little to worry about. But if it does, I’ll see if I can’t get Bill flagged as co-author of that scene.
What!!?? Without my incalculable input (you DO have to use imaginary numbers …. ) This thing never would have flown. I am in full protest mode.
So you’re saying the manuscript is only suitable to be made into several hundred paper airplanes. Got it.
Well, that is better than MY best effort … which would have made a dozen paper footballs.