One true sentence a day. That’s all I’m shooting for.
Every day before I start to write, I look through my yellow index cards to keep the various story questions in my mind as I write. If I have time in the morning before I go to work, I give them a look then as well. I never know what my subconscious will come up with on the drive or while I’m working on spreadsheets and other not-so-creative tasks.
Like today.
I’ve been working on the opening of the book. I decided to go back when the main character is very young and living through a horrible experience. (see this week’s Teaser Tuesday.) It’s a scene I’ve written many times over the years. Most versions I gave away too much. So I started cutting, digging in for just the emotion of the moment. But the rhythm was off at the end of the scene. It needed something more. One sentence. Just a few words.
They were running but I had no idea what happened next. They were running and then they weren’t. They were running and something happened. I almost gave up and then I realized that they were running and they just kept on running.
It was enough and I ended the scene. I had no idea who was running (besides the main character.) I had no idea where they were going or what would happen when they got there. I just knew they were running. I knew it was a true sentence. On the way to work today, in that half awake fog that is my commute brain, I knew at once who it was.
I filed that new knowledge away and started my work day. But first I gave my subconscious something to work on. Something that had to do with names. On the way home from work I got an idea and couldn’t wait to get home and play with it. I’m sure it is as a result of the suggestion I gave me subconscious And now, as I call it a night, I can say it worked out better than I had hoped.
I finished tonight’s writing session with one of those sentences that not only gave me goosebumps, but put another whole layer into the story.
I love this job.
🙂
I try all kinds of things when I get stuck at a certain spot in a scene:
The what-if game. What if this happens next? What if that happens?
Staring at the wall. (Waiting for subconscious to take over.)
Going on to the next scene, figuring I can get that other scene unstuck sometime in the future.
Congratulations on your goosebumps!
Isn’t it amazing all the mind games we have to play with ourselves to get the story out? I can hear it all so clearly in my head but it’s a lot more difficult to get it down on the page.
Sometimes it seems like what we most need to do is get out of our own way.
My last year in grad school, I took a cognitive psych course. There were a series of fascinating studies that showed that when people solve problems after struggling with them for a while, it’s not that they’ve had some great new revelation, but that they’ve dropped or forgotten the unsuccessful strategy that kept them stuck. Once that falls away, the solution is clear.
I don’t know if it works for writing, but it’s such an interesting idea (to me, anyway!).
Oh I totally believe that. I think that’s why, for me, the subconscious thing works. I try to do sleep suggestions around my current WIP each night before bed. They used to work well but the last year, not so much. I think I am so stressed, so exhausted, so sleep-deprived that all my energy goes into just sleeping. 🙂
But after working with a problem before bed, coming to a point in the plot that I NEED something before I can go on, I often find if I remind myself of it on the way to work I can have a breakthrough when I’m sitting in an engineering meeting or doing statistics or something that takes me totally out of my right brain.
I love it when that happens.