To all of you who are in the middle of NaNoWriMo, may the wind fill your sails! If you have time or need a break, please let the rest of us know how you’re faring. And here’s the link to Kitty’s NaNoWriMo forum, which she put together particularly for this blog’s writer-participants: http://nanowrimo.org/forums/writing-groups-and-clubs/threads/260467.

On July 16, 2015 Abigail wrote, I know you did a post on this already, but it’s not so much story hopping, but losing interest. I have a story called “The Luckbringer” that currently has over 27,000 words. And I haven’t written in it since school ended (early June).

Partially, it’s because I’m in a filler/standstill part in the story. What do you do when you’re at those? I hate them, and sometimes I manage to slog through them, but usually I end up with seven different subplots I started to get it moving. Uggggh.

Also, I guess I don’t know where the story is going RIGHT NOW. I know where it’s supposed to end, and what I need to do to get there, but I’m not really sure what to write. Do you write a huge, detailed outline explaining what happens in every chapter? I have a few friends who do that, and personally I think it’s a waste of time and a restriction on your creativity, but I guess it’d also help you out during those filler chapters. What’s your thought on that?

And one more thing: When I want to sit down and write (or at least, feel like I should), sometimes I stare at my computer screen for fifteen minutes without writing anything, then go do something else. I’ve tried ‘tickling the keys’ and writing in a notebook, but it doesn’t help much.

To start with, on the subject of outlining or not, please take a look at my recent post, called “Plan or Pants,” on September 2nd, and don’t read just my words. Be sure to check out the comments, because lots of people weighed in. Everyone works differently, and there’s a long spectrum from outliner to pantser.

Onto filler scenes. I’m not sure, but we might do better if we dream up another name for them, like transition scenes or going deeper scenes, because just the word filler makes me sleepy.

However, sometimes–whatever we call them–they’re necessary, I guess. Please speak up if you disagree.

So, what to do?

At the beginning of my prequel to The Two Princesses of Bamarre, tentatively called Bamarre, MC Perry is a child in a Sparta-like culture, and she has to be trained in the arts of war. If she were awkward and weak, tension would come easily. She could fail, and she and the reader would suffer. But she’s a strong, gifted athlete. Are you yawning yet? I was, but it seemed essential to completing this world to show what its children have to go through.

I did a few things, not just to keep myself awake, but also to round out Perry’s character and to advance the plot. I made the other children, except one, dislike her, and I explored the exception.

Possibly, I could have used the enmity of the other children to create conflict, but their dislike wasn’t going to be a significant plot thread, and I kept it to a minimum. (I tend to over-complicate, so I was wary of myself.) Also, because I didn’t want to overburden this part of the story, I didn’t enlarge much on the new friendship.

Wrapped up in this example are three strategies:

∙ Truncate. Suspect every sentence. If we don’t need it, out it goes. Switching from showing to telling will help in the shortening. In my example, we can show one sort of training and tell the others, briefly. This truncating can be done both while we’re writing the scene and in revision as soon as we finish. If we’ve introduced seven subplots to get us through, we can consider each one, because there may be gold among them, and then we can ditch the dross. In fact, question your entire transition scene. Do you really need it. Can you cover it in a single sentence and move on?

∙ Reveal character. What a character does when she’s disliked may expose aspects of her not otherwise seen. Does she try harder? Withdraw? Comfort herself in other ways? Become belligerent? Whatever choice she makes will teach us and the reader more about her–and will make the pages interesting, even exciting.

∙ Advance plot. In my story, the single friendship becomes important. To come up with ways to advance the plot, think about the main conflict and how your intermediate scene can contribute to it. This has nothing to do with my manuscript, but let’s imagine that Perry’s new friend is going to die (somehow) later in the story. Well, what little thing can we drop into this scene to hint at the trouble to come. Since these pages are transitional, we don’t want it to be a big deal, just a bell that chimes softly. The reader will hear.

On Abigail’s last question, about being stuck and unable to write, I sympathize. At the moment, I’m figuring out what to write next and I’m not making much progress. But I do believe in tickling the keys. I’d suggest writing off topic about something that matters to you. Rant or obsess (in writing) or describe the latest funny thing that happened in your family or with friends. Don’t make yourself write your story or write about your story until and unless it just starts coming. And don’t do what I’ve been doing lately, an addiction, which is switching from writing to playing a solitaire game called Free Cell. Do not do that! Especially if you’re in the middle of NaNoWriMo, do not do that!

Here are three prompts:

∙ Your MC has left his old life behind. He’s on a train or in a caravan or a commercial spaceship, off to–you decide where and what. An interlude is needed for the transition. Nothing major is going to happen, but a few small things may. Write the scene. Do not let it go more than five pages, or, if it does, cut it back in revision.

∙ Use the situation I described above. Your MC is learning a new skill and has just made a friend, though no one else likes her. The new skill is the transition part, so let it be something dull, like stringing beads. Make the reader worry just the slightest bit about the safety of the new friend. Again, keep the scene short.

∙ Your MC and another character, you decide who, are in a boat in the middle of one of the Great Lakes. Think big body of water. The engine has died. Swimming to shore is not an option, and if no one realizes what’s happened, they will be in terrible trouble. But for now, the water is calm, the sky is blue. Write the scene before everything starts to fall apart.

Have fun, and save what you write!