I agree with you to shut down and start another story that you have not to describe the sex senses. I love the mystery- horror stories but without sex. If you someday wrote such story, I would be one of the buyers
Those dreadful middles, here. Getting from one point to another is where you build character and suspense but it's a balancing act.
I hate openers and closers because people judge those so heavily. You have to make sure you get it just right, and you can never please everybody. Otherwise, emotional scenes can be a challenge because it's hard to bring out believable emotions sometimes. Introspective scenes are also a challenge because you have to stay in the character's head and try not to bore the reader with unimportant, irrelevant, unbelievable thoughts.
Scenes where I have to deliver crucial information or have my character(s) reach a certain conclusion are the worse. Those "sherlock-esque" scenes where they're mulling over the evidence or questioning a witness, in an attempt to figure out what their next move will be. I loathe those scenes, but they're necessary to move the plot forward and can deliver some of the punchiest twists when done correctly. My latest WIP is one part mystery, one part sci-fi action adventure. My main characters are traveling across the galaxy, trying to track down a missing woman, while also trying to figure out what the heck happened to her. She was part of a covert operation/exploratory mission that went horribly wrong --or horribly right-- and went a little loopy in the process. There's lots of breadcrumb-chasing, interpersed with action scenes, and meeting new faces along the way.
Ha ha. Why? A common problem. Hemingway's advice was to never think about your writing when your not writing. I've given up on writing scenes I dread. If I feel like I've got to have it, I probably don't need have it.
Right now I'm struggling to write a beginning. I mean, my novel is FINISHED, but I still can't seem to get the tone of the beginning right. I've written, re-written ...it's still not right. It's been one of those AARGH weeks. I HATE beginnings. I'm crap at them.
I cannot write scenes focusing on guys, because, well, I'm a girl and don't associate much with the opposite gender, so I don't know many of the nuances between female and male minds. I also can't write scenes involving romance or an excess of dialogue because both turn out too forced. I rely on descriptive and introspective writing -.-' I also am awful at beginnings...I can't make a good "hook" at all.
The scene I'm dreading writing is the one where I fully unmask my villain. This is in my work-in-revision, and in the original novella he was a stereotypical megalomaniac and happy to remain so. But now that I'm making my protagonists more realistic, I have to make sure the villain is as logically-motivated, rounded, and realistic as they are. And do it all without diminishing his villainy or having his schemes (and therefore, the dilemma he poses for the MCs) seem utterly preposterous in my ordinary 20th century American setting. I don't dread writing it, exactly; I dread writing it badly. Oh, yes, I also dread it when I've submitted something to the workshop and people tell me it's not working and suggest how it could work. And I'm thinking, "But I don't know how to write like that!" I hate feeling clueless about the craft . . . but of course I have to think it over and put it all in the mental blender and revise the piece anyway. It gets easier over time.
I hate writing POV scenes from characters I dislike, but more importantly, that I can't relate too. When I'm writing from a villain's POV it can be difficult to authentically get into their heads and make it sound natural. Those usually take a lot of time for me.
I hate writing POV scenes from characters I dislike, but more importantly, that I can't relate too. When I'm writing from a villain's POV it can be difficult to authentically get into their heads and make it sound natural. Those usually take a lot of time for me.
I... hate writing happiness. Don't ask me why. I don't actually know! My last project, out of twenty chapters, there were TWO chapters where both the MCs were happy. I had every intention of writing more cutesy happy happiness and lots of sex scenes [it was intended to be a smutty fanfiction with a heartbreaking ending...] but it took me until chapter 15 to realise I'd moved the plot along delivering little more than constant pain to the characters and my readers. It took me until chapter 17 to write them into a situation where they could both be happy and then chapter 19 was a death scene. I'm tempted to rewrite it and 20 now because the death feels incongruous and contrived after all that was written in the leadup, and what comes after it depends on the death itself. The project before that never got finished because I choked on the joy of the characters' reunion [another fanfiction, different fandom though]. I couldn't even get past that to get to the parts that I like writing. The project I'm working on now is an interesting one. It's starting off tense and stressful with problems galore. As I work through my characters fixing or not fixing the problems, I'm not sure where it's going to go from there. Yet another fanfiction. Same fandom as the one I just finished. All of the above are side projects. I have a co-writer for my MAIN project and it's very frustrating waiting for her to write. My main character is insane. Not just a little odd or eccentric but honestly dangerously insane. I don't know enough about psychiatry to know where he would slot in but I'd say he's somewhere between psychopath and sociopath. And has no qualms against killing just for the sake of it. He's glorious to write because even in calm, happy scenes there's always that undercurrent of tension. I can't predict him. I never know what he's going to do next.
That's an interesting dilemma, and one I've not heard put quite as eloquently before. I've just been reading a book (a how-to) that asks a question that might be pertinent to you. It says "think about what your readers want." In other words, think about how your readers want to feel while they read your book. Tense? Intrigued? Absorbed? Angry? Miserable? Depressed? Horrified? Or sympathetic? Or nostalgic? Or weepy? Or fulfilled? Warm and comforted? If you can put yourself in the mind of your reader as well as your characters, you will be able to manipulate your story tone to create the effect you want. If your story seems to be leading YOU down paths you didn't expect, it might also be a good idea to follow those paths and see where they lead. Maybe you started out wanting to write a lighthearted romance, but it starts taking a darker turn? That's not a bad thing either. After all, one of the objections lots of people have to 'lighthearted romance' is that it's not realistic. Maybe your urge to be 'real' is telling you to write differently. It sounds as if this downward spiral to unhappiness is not something you're consciously controlling ...so it might make sense to follow it. It's your subconscious speaking, after all! Nothing gets more real than that. You may end up with an entirely different story aimed at an entirely different readership than what you thought you'd have when you started out. Not a bad thing at all, as long as you can make it work. Good luck!
My stories never go how I plan them to lol! I'm really not a very flexible writer. Everything I write ends up angsty and depressing, and if I'm writing with someone who tries to haul the story up out of its depression I just throw more drama at it until everything falls to bits and none of my characters want to even try anymore. I break them regularly. I drove one to suicide, and he was supposed to get a happy ending. I've fallen out with co-writers many times over my fixation with angst. The current one doesn't mind and is happy to go along with what I have planned, but she does regularly comment that I must be Satan incarnate or something because if my characters aren't broken when I start with them, they're certainly broken when I'm finished. I think I've written... one happy ending ever. I don't finish much and the occasional thing I do finish is never happy. I get bored writing if there isn't enough drama.
I have trouble with what I call "glue" scenes. Those are the scenes that seem to be necessary to make the story coherent, such as transitions or scenes that provide "essential" background, but that are very prone to being boring. When I try to write them they end up sounding like news reports of some kind. I've noticed that in many cases I don't need to write the scene at all. That's a big relief. In cases where I feel like I really do need the scene I try to find some interesting way to handle it so that it is engaging (hopefully) not only to me but also to the reader!
I was stuck needing to describe a setting. I just skipped it and went to the dialogue and people interaction. It was stopping me from going forward with the story. I know I have to go back and write it. ... Later.
I met another one. I'm really struggling with it. It's just a relaxing fun sort of scene. Fluff. But there's character development in there because fluffing about is so out of character for one in particular and it's important because it denotes a BIG change... but I just... can't. I hate writing fluff. Nothing interesting is happening, so the only way I can make it interesting is by developing character interactions. And I just don't find people that interesting.
I'm on the autism spectrum, people are one of the few things I'm not good at dealing with and quite honestly and frankly not particularly interested in getting good at. There's one person on the planet I find interesting for more than five minutes at a time. I did manage to write the scene. Now the characters are in Israel and the POV character won't stop complaining about how hot it is. To be fair, his main means of shedding heat is his wings, and he has to keep them pressed tightly against his body because he's an angel. In Israel. You can imagine the fuss that would cause if people knew.
It's a Supernatural fanfiction. Not quite canon universe, because I never write canon universe and I wanted Cas to have wings, which he obviously doesn't manifest in physical form in the actual show. He's keeping them hidden beneath local clothing. Israel being Middle Eastern type area and climate one would imagine they favour long, loose clothing. But it's very uncomfortable for him because it means keeping two very large heat sinks pressed up against his body. I just feel bad for him because he's becoming more and more human and he sweats now. Not good for his feathers. Sweat, dust, and rubbing from his clothes... not to mention muscle cramping from keeping them in the same position constantly while he's outside the hotel room [which is up to 15 hours a day]. Naturally, physical discomfort is the first thing on his mind. Everything else is secondary. It's interesting to write but I don't know how it's going to read. Hopefully not like he has nothing better to do than bitch about the heat. Even though he literally has nothing better to do now. They're waiting for their flight home.
Slow burn scenes are especially difficult for me, scenes that need to happen for character development or plot development but have very little action or strong emotion in them.
Me too, that's what I'm stuck on at the moment! Not a lot going on but a lot of important plot AND character development so I have to write it. I just... struggle. I think it's very difficult to make scenes like these interesting.
Anything with romance or honest sexual references (like, not even scenes). I don't so much dread writing them, but I'm really, really bad at it.
