I've been writing this story for a couple months now and I've always tried to piece it together but always failed because I would have mental notes of where the story should go but it always gets sidetracked, so what I decided to do is only write what I want to happen in chronological order and then go back and create logical bridges between each of these points and it's been going okay. The problem arises when I have a bridge between two scenes which I decide should be dedicated to some downtime and small moments to make the view get to know the characters while they're in an inconsequential scene, but lately I've felt like these scenes seem too boring but I'm not sure it's because they're actually boring, or because I as the person who knows how everything plays out due to me being the author, just want to skip to the "good part" and witness the action, hopefully I'm not bias but these downtimes don't even seem that long either. Reply if you can, seriously anything helps even if you don't think so, thank you.
How long of a story is this? Short story or novel? The reason I ask—if it's a novel you may be writing in-between scenes where really you need a chapter break. Or maybe a scene break if it's a short story.
I don't think I would call it a novel, maybe closer to a vague screenplay? But yes it's a long story, the bridges are usually 2-10 minutes of reading, depending on how intense the scenes before and after will be.
I confess I am mostly here to say that you have just created surely the most universally applicable thread title for the Writing Forums. Can I have the thread title when you're done with it? Can we pin it? Maybe use these down times to get to know the characters in such a way that it imparts info that recontextualises the previous action scenes. "Oh! All along I thought the MC, a rifleman in Wellington's army, was fighting for love of his country. But actually he's just alluded to how much he hates his French step-dad. So now I'm realising that the battle in the previous chapter, where he got seriously pokey with the bayonet, was actually the revenge of a scared angry little boy, not a bloodthirsty patriot." And then the reader anticipates the next down time because they are expecting it to give compelling background to the action they have already read or are anticipating later. Just a thought.
This does make a lot of sense, I have only been doing this but applying it for future scenes, not previous scenes, I'll try to really keep this in mind because this is the main idea behind some of the recurring characters that I have, the audience/reader having an expectation for the character, only to realize that their actions we're interpreted as something else which would also apply. Thank you so much lol, gonna have to really remember this and rewrite some stuff then
It's nice to read posts like this in between "What powers should I give my vampire?" Boring stuff that has been carefully fitted into a plot structure and used as a way of controlling pace - is boring stuff that's going to be easy to edit out. So probably the stock advice for this is to leave it be and just keep writing it. To leave a good break (e.g. 6 months) before editing to 2nd draft. And at some point to ask others to read it and say if it's boring. It's in the eye of the beholder: when readers attach to a character they start to like just spending time with them and we have a simple career filling their bookshelves with boring slices-of-life. But in general we have to earn that by telling the story through big moments, consequential scenes, and good parts. Our fiction having intensity and slowness can be seen as a flaw - since the world doesn't speed up or slow down - except from our perspective. Everything is in motion, so for a story to seem natural, perhaps it must move constantly, with the pov's perceptions driving the pace. Something I find useful is to show either thoughts, or description, or dialogue but to keep them all moving in parallel. If the pov is talking, we don't get a long description of someone's coat - only a few words of description if they mentally pause to notice something. But if they are sitting observing someone's coat, the storyworld around them is still moving.
Seconded. As I like to say—flow through dialogue, action and description without getting too hung up on any one part for too long.
Let yourself get sidetracked - it's your characters telling you the story maybe should be something else. You can prune a rose bush but you can't really make it grow. Let your story grow organically. You're not letting it - you're actively killing it and that's why the bridges between scenes are boring. Yes, they are, because no one scene should be ONLY dedicated to one thing. If your action scenes aren't revealing character, they're not doing their job. If your bridge character development scenes aren't forwarding the wider plot in some way, they're also not doing their job. If you think the story is boring, then it probably is. What you're doing isn't working. Go and get sidetracked, let your mind explore, go off the beaten path. Your creative mind knows what it's doing - let it do its job! You can edit and prune later!
Yeah, OK, but now you've bought it up, what powers should I give my vampire? Spoiler The power to make really unpleasant and timeless undercurrents of sexual exploitation and aristocratic abuse seem like a kitchy bit of jump scare fun, of course!
I use the eavesdropping test for how well a story flows. A story is always a combination of many short stories all with the intent of letting you learn more about the characters or situation in an interesting fashion. If you were telling someone at a party your segway, and it is not enough for someone to stop in their tracks to try and piece it together, be curious enough to want to know more, you have failed. The ability to tell any story with flare so that it draws the listener in, is the difference between someone just putting words down on paper or someone telling or writing a riveting story. The question is how high do want to set the bar for yourself as a storyteller.
Maybe it is boring because you are trying to craft it too carefully or dryly. I find that when I try to fit things logically and they end up fitting too well, it also means they leave the human factor out. While we do things logically we don't have full control over a situation and we don't always understand all the reasons behind our actions. Even as authors we don't have a "complete" explanation of a character's behavior . . . . I disagree that it is ok for a downtime to be boring, unless by boring you mean deprived of fast-paced action. I personally feel that if you (the author) are bored, your readers will surely be bored too. I don't mean bored after reading the same scene multiple times in a row, I mean bored after you let it rest for a while, pick it up again, and then still find it boring. If that is the case, I suggest changing the scene, maybe the elements and events in that scene, although they help illustrate the behavior of a character, are not the right examples or not the right way to package the explanation. I would recommend to keep looking.
