{"id":1150,"date":"2020-04-22T08:16:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2020-04-22T08:16:56","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:16:56","slug":"morass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/22\/morass\/","title":{"rendered":"Morass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the post, I want to let you know about the online Everywhere Book Fest on May 1st and 2nd. When an in-person festival was canceled, participating authors got together to move it online, and this is the result. I\u2019ll be on a panel on writing historical fiction with the wonderful writers Linda Sue Park and Anne Bustard for forty-five minutes on May 1st at 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. You can watch on Facebook or YouTube (at the festival\u2019s site, not mine). The panel will be live, so you can ask questions in real time. Here\u2019s a link to the festival: https:\/\/everywherebookfest.com\/<\/a>. Hope you can e-come!<\/p>\n

Also, there\u2019s a blog post on HarperCollins\u2019s website that I wrote about my historical novel, A Ceiling Made of Eggshells<\/em>: https:\/\/harperstacks.harpercollins.com\/blog\/writing-familiar-strangers-gail-carson-levine-on-her-familys-long-history-of-migration\/<\/a>. The post doesn\u2019t say, but I\u2019ll tell you, in the photo of the two boys on a pony, my father is the younger boy. Cute, wasn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n

And, you may know that I\u2019m reading a chapter a day of Ella Enchanted<\/em> on my Facebook page, at 11:00 am Eastern Daylight Time. Some of you, I know, are watching. You can comment, so I can know you\u2019re there, which is heartening.<\/p>\n

Onto the post!<\/p>\n

On December 5, 2019, future_famous_author wrote, How do you guys deal with being stuck? Like writers\u2019 block, but you know where you want to go, you just don\u2019t know how to get there?<\/em><\/p>\n

Writing Ballerina wrote back, I read a great blog post that summed up what writer\u2019s block really is: https:\/\/jerryjenkins.com\/writers-block\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If this doesn\u2019t help, I\u2019d also say to write the part that you know is going to happen, then go back and show how you got there. Writing the part might help you figure out how you\u2019re going to get there.<\/p>\n

Interesting link, Writing Ballerina! I\u2019m with Mr. Jenkins, except about the \u201cfaucet of creativity.\u201d My faucet comes out in drips, occasional spurts; and sometimes it\u2019s pretty clogged.<\/p>\n

I see two questions here: how to deal with being stuck; and how to move a story where you know you want it to go, but you don\u2019t have a clue about how to get it there. The second question, in my opinion, is about plotting.<\/p>\n

I agree with Mr. Jenkins about setting daily goals, in my case a time goal rather than a page goal. Something usually happens when we place our fingers on our keyboard or pick up our pen. We write, maybe not, seemingly, to the purpose we\u2019re hoping for, but we write something, maybe about what\u2019s going on in the world or how annoying certain people in our lives can be. These ramblings are likely to loosen us up. At worst, we understand better what\u2019s going on with ourselves, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. At best, our ruminations eventually move to the territory of our story. We start to write what\u2019s going on there, what\u2019s frustrating us, what the roadblocks are.<\/p>\n

I do all this in my Ideas document for every book I write. Ideas is where I go to get unstuck (and it\u2019s also where I try out new ideas and even write parts I\u2019m uncertain about). Sometimes I say I\u2019m going to write for twenty minutes without stopping about what\u2019s going on in my story and how and why it\u2019s giving me trouble.<\/p>\n

Everything is up for grabs when we\u2019re stuck. For example, Writing Ballerina writes that she knows where she wants her story to go. Well, in Ideas, I might question even that. I\u2019d wonder if my story, without letting me know, has decided it wants a different ending, and maybe that\u2019s what\u2019s holding me up. Then I\u2019d think about why it may have made that decision and what the new ending might be.<\/p>\n

Of course I lean on lists when I\u2019m stuck, and when I am, it\u2019s especially important to remind myself that nothing on a list is stupid. I can include an ending in which all my characters turn into caterpillars, if that occurs to me. That kind of freedom is, well, freeing. I feel as if my skull is actually cracking open\u2013in a good way. Stupid-is-okay is un-glue when we\u2019re stuck.<\/p>\n

Now for plotting.<\/p>\n

The dynamic at the heart of our story is our MC and her struggle. What does she want? Or what is the dilemma she\u2019s in that she has to get out of?<\/p>\n

If we know what that is, we can look at our ending and see if it reflects her success (or failure, if we\u2019re writing a tragedy). We can make sure that our ending is about her and not a more general resolution. If it is about her, we think about how to make achieving the end hard for her. How can we use our characters, her own inner demons, and our world to create scenes in which she fails and tries again? (If this will be a tragedy, the trajectory will be different, because, usually, we want her to get closer and closer to success, until, finally, boom! everything falls apart.) In our plotting we can think about using each one (other characters, her own flaws, and the setting) to make trouble for her. Meanwhile, we keep an eye on the ending, and see which failure can be decisive to bring her to success and our ending.<\/p>\n

If our ending doesn\u2019t reflect what our character wants or needs, we can rethink one or the other. Maybe we have to tweak our ending to bring our MC into it more so that the general success is her success. Or, we may have to think about her and what she wants and make that line up more with the direction of the story.<\/p>\n

Using our Ideas document, we might lay out a timeline for our story. How much time passes between the beginning we have and the ending we imagine? What scenes do we absolutely want? We can write those scenes out of order, just because we know we want them and they’re bits we can hang onto and actually write during our stuck period.<\/p>\n

Once they’re written, we can think about scenes that might go before the new ones and come after them, like writing a story as a series of dots along a line. We have a line that starts with our beginning and terminates, you guessed it, at the end. We don\u2019t have to fill in every\u2013or any–dot in order. This is a pantsing method that gets us where we want to go.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another technique. We have a beginning and an MC who wants something or is in trouble. (If the MC’s problem isn\u2019t set up, try some of my ideas above). Then we\u2019re stuck until the end. So we go to our beginning and ask, What if? We list the possible things that could happen next and choose the one that interests us the most. We write that scene and repeat. Repeat. Repeat. We\u2019re guided through our What if?s and the resulting lists by two considerations: our MC\u2019s problem and the ending we\u2019re aiming for. We\u2019re asking ourselves along the way, Will this What if? idea get us closer or farther from solving our MC\u2019s issue? If the answer–closer or farther–is yes, that\u2019s good, because we’re either creating crises that are connected to our central issue or resolving them. If the answer is that it doesn\u2019t get us either closer or farther, we should rethink the What If idea, because it may lead us into a cul-de-sac.<\/p>\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Remember the fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare? I like it because if a movie studio picked it up I\u2019d be a good choice to play the tortoise. But it\u2019s a dull story. The tortoise just puts one horned foot in front of the other. The reader knows the beginning, the middle (which can be summed up in a short sentence), and the end. Where\u2019s the drama? Who are these characters, besides being steady or flighty? How much do they care about the race? Is there a prize? Do they like or hate each other? Take the fable and turn it into a real story. Your characters can be the actual animals or people or any kind of creature.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cGoldilocks and the Three Bears\u201d is unsatisfying, too. She just wanders into the bears\u2019 cottage and, after behaving badly and being discovered, she runs out. What are the consequences for the bears, for Goldilocks? Do they ever have a relationship? Maybe she wasn\u2019t polite, but the bears don\u2019t show much compassion, either. They don\u2019t ask if she was starving, if she\u2019s homeless, what\u2019s going on in her family. Make it a story. Decide on an MC and what his or her or their problem is. Imagine an ending. Write it all.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Off topic, but make up a noun that means the opposite of glue. Unglue is a word, but only as a verb. There should be a noun! Please post your nominations. I\u2019m curious. Maybe there\u2019s a word in another language, which you know. If we all use one that you provide, we can introduce it into English.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the post, I want to let you know about the online Everywhere Book Fest on May 1st and 2nd. When an in-person festival was canceled, participating authors got together to move it online, and this is the result. I\u2019ll be on a panel on writing historical fiction with the wonderful writers Linda Sue Park […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}