How I get Myself Unstuck from a Scene
Traci Kenworth
I’ve come up against walls more than a few times when it comes to scenes. There’s a recent one when I needed a character to have certain powers—I just couldn’t figure out what those would be, so I procrastinated about it for days until the answer worked itself out. This is not to say I avoided the scene all together for those days. I worked on this and that of it, chipping away at what I had, until finally a gem formed.
How did I figure it out? Well, I researched different powers. Well, not in the way I could say, “Hey, I’ll give her Supergirl’s powers.” No, I thought about the different elements, what related to her character, where I planned to go from here with her. And slowly, the answers came. And better than expected. Cryogencis. Lava. Avalanches. All these and more were investigated in the hope something would spark.
Another time, I had to introduce a character who has visions of certain events in my book. He was cursed with this by another character. I struggled with whether to write what he witnessed as first person or third. It didn’t quite work out with first as the story is told in first person to begin with and became too confusing for my cps, so I switched it to third and now it is sailing along. The reason behind this being, he has to “see” events through another character’s eyes. He can’t speak for them, he can only observe them.
So you see, there is a way to work through your difficulties. It just takes a new approach. Like I did with my latest book I’m editing. I totally changed the storyline for the female lead in the revisions from passive/sidelines to proactive, kickbutt heroine and it worked. She is now one of the most interesting characters I’ve written. All because I ran into a wall. Sometimes those blockages are good in terms of the story. They force you to work harder, to challenge yourself more.
Any tips you know on how to scale those walls? Doesn’t your story prove stronger/better for it? I think it’s really the Muse telling us to hold up, let’s look at thing from all angles, and then surprising us with its brilliance. So what has your Muse blocked for you lately?
Where Genres Collide Traci Dowe YA Author 
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