Have you ever had those moments where a scene in your story plays out in your head, over and over again, and by the time you get to writing it down, it just doesn't seem to have the same profoundness it did when you imagined it? For the first time in nearly 10 years I'm compelled to write fiction but this scene has me stumped. Not that what I'm putting down is bad, its on par with the rest of the story, but in my mind it just seemed so much more epic. I'm having trouble capturing that feeling of and putting it on screen, like I"m trying to grasp a fading dream that grows evermore distant and obscured. Thoughts?
I think every author has a better version in their heads. New authors more than any other. When you imagine a scene, you know every detail and emotion that is coursing through it. However, on paper, it's harder to see it and harder to write it all so when the scene arrives the reader feels the same. One of the biggest issues I find when writing is that an author is a terrible judge when it comes to his own work. There is no magic, there is no mystery, there is no romance. The author felt it a dozen times over as he created it and becomes dead to it.
This happens to me especially with my 'brilliant', middle-of-the-night realizations. For a while, I kept a notepad by my bed so I could scribble the ideas down and then work on them in the morning, but I stopped bothering, because the ideas weren't usually that good by the time I got them typed up. For other ideas, ideas that really are solid and dramatic, I'd recommend trying to boil the emotion down into a symbol or single gesture or something else that can give a lot of weight without bogging down the scene. I think we often try to add drama by adding words, when really we should be taking words away.
You're right, I should take the time to enjoy the writing process itself instead expecting that I can recapture the same feeling I got when I first imagined things. The fact that I was highly medicated when I first began writing again for the first time in years earlier this week may have skewed my perspective on things a bit. Good point. I'm accustom to just writing as much as possible when doing the first draft then coming back and editing it down. I like having lots of "building blocks" to play with when editing but I can see that having a "less is more" mentality from the start could be very helpful and streamline the writing experience a bit, putting less pressure on me to get everything just right. I'm also a huge adherent to the writing standard of "show, don't tell" but I can see how that can get out of hand sometimes and bog down not just the story but also the writing experience it self.
Even if you're focused on showing, not telling, you can show a hell of a lot with a single gesture, if you can find the right one.
Jimmy Breslin wrote that he sometimes had what he considered brilliant ideas when he was out drinking, but when he did, he always waited until the next morning to see if it passed the Hangover Test. If it still seemed brilliant when he was in the throes of a hangover, he went with it.
Yes. I try to fix it by not seeing it as anything but a scene ( nothing special ) and breaking it down according to feeling, mood or symbolism. I'm with Bayview in that the more you try to talk about something to make it seem powerful - tossing in a lot of four syllable words - the worse it sounds. I recall one writer ( I'm not sure if it was on here or another site ) wrote a scene involving an abused woman. Nobody could sympathize with the character or find anything powerful about the scene because it came across rather pretentious. The character kept telling you exactly how she felt, blowing it up so hugely as though no one had ever felt this way before that the reader felt a bit miffed because they knew a lot of women go through this, and they also weren't trusted to develop an understanding of the character or scene. Not with everything told. I try to go with symbolism, less flashy words, more concrete words, and something that sparks an aha moment in the reader.
