One of the few things guaranteed to fuel a sleepless night is a hole in a story. I am almost there, 3/4s away from finishing the first draft (brillilant, of course), the final dramatic scene clearly in mind. 'He' goes for his gun, at that very moment there is an explosion, knocking him senseless. So 'she' fires twice at him ... where did 'she' get the gun? Then you realize that 'he' is supposed to be 90 miles away at the other attack site. When the young man who dreams only of her bursts into the room to save her ... 'the other he (him?)' is supposed to be at the police communications room 10 blocks away.
This just happened to me, and I spent all last night tossing and turning - my wife will attest to it! My story had a hole and I plunged headlong into it.
I write in fits of brilliant inspiration. That's what I like to call it, anyway. I am an advocate of "free writing" then assembling and editing to put a story together. That style suites me better than outlining a story to the Nth degree first. But it leads me to these holes, and I have created some unique solutions to climbing back out.
Rather than bore you with a long-winded rant, I am going to publish a series of "holes" I created for myself in writing "The Black Sun" and discuss how I worked my way out of them. The first one will be my action scene above, but there are a lot of them in this book, and the manner and discipline needed to rectify the problem makes for some serious book editing illustrations - I hope these will be of help to others.
Next blog: How I get 'him' to the chateau, how 'she' gets a gun, and how 'the other him' can be in two places at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment