Novel When you're bored with your own novel...

I've reached this point in my story where the MC has left her old life behind and is starting new somewhere else. I was writing about her getting all settled in at the new place (it's a school/military fort type place, so room assignment, orientation, uniform, schedule, etc...) and, well, I'm bored.
I am NO GOOD at skipping over parts to write what's next...I HAVE to have continuity, I can't have a blank scene before I write the next. It's just how I am.
But if I'm bored, the potential readers will be bored. How do I overcome this and get back to writing? I've put it aside for a while in favor of reading some new books, but I don't want to get too far away from it.

 

Could you just "tell" those parts with the understanding that you will almost certainly be cutting them later? Like, keep it really really short, but give yourself enough so it feels like you've got the continuity you need?

 

You are telling a story, not writing a manual. Skipping over boring things in the story is just part of writing. I suggest you work on that a little more. It sounds like you may have a hard time letting go of certain things you write or your process. You say that writing this sort of play-by-play is just how you work, but it's not working. So, that usually means to try something new. It's good that you're reading while you take some time to figure this out. Hopefully, you've got some good books that will offer examples of what you can do better.

 

I'm with you in that I need successive continuity, but you can quickly explain the schedule, uniforms, mandatory happenings without getting too specific. You have to leave something up to he reader's imagination. Some great novels I have read do this, and I appreciate it. If you're bored writing about it, imagine how bored the readers are reading it.

Hope this helps!

 

When I encounter that problem, I always reach for (what I call) an event. Have sex, kill someone, introduce an old acquaintance or just find your character has to come to the aid of someone in need of medical help.

 

I think you guys are right...I need to gloss over this scene a bit more and arrange some sort of event like @Thundair is talking about. Right now I'm trying to get into my character's head more. She's 17 and well, 17 was a while ago for me....so I've spent today reading my journal from my freshman year of college, when I was 18. It's a similar circumstance to my MC, as well. Thank you guys for chiming in, I think I just needed a kick in the rear to allow myself to gloss over this scene, you know?

 

I'd be cautious about adding too many events...

I did that for my first novel because I didn't really know how to jump past the boring parts and I ended up adding quite a bit of bloat to the novel--edits were really harsh. If the extra elements contribute to what you're trying to do, great, but they should be there because they're important to your story, not because you needed something to make room selection and uniform assignment more interesting...

 

I'm thinking more like....conflict with other new students, some issue with fitting in that I can expand on as I go, not necessarily something major. Just something to move the plot along.

 

Does it contribute to the overall story you're telling?

 

is your issue with continuity because you absolutely HAVE to have it in the story, or is it because you need to have it in your own head so you don't accidentally lose consistency?

if it's the latter (i know that's how i'd feel), write all the boring crap down. Get needlessly detailed. Ramble. Then set it aside knowing that it's there and it happened but you don't necessarily need it to be in the story. then as you move forward you may be struck with inspiration that will offer a more palatable bridge from exciting thing to exciting thing rather than playing the info-dump game.

that's something i've had fun learning. i keep not writing things because i don't want it in the story... but who says it doesn't need to be written? there's something awfully liberating about writing whatever i want even though i know it may never have eyes laid on it other than my own.

 

You want whatever the conflict is to tie into the story, otherwise it may not be moving the plot along, but instead adding unneeded filler.

I had two sections like this in the middle of my WIP. I wrote past the sections and then came back to them. Rather than finding housekeeping that could be skipped (in your case moving into the new school), I instead found story elements that I hadn't considered.

For example in one of the sections my protag is in a new setting with new people. These people want to help her and originally I had her hitting it off with the girl. My critique group questioned if it would be that easy? You can be nice to a new person and still have very awkward cultural clashes. Once I changed the relationship of the two girls, the scene got a whole lot less boring. Cultural divides are a big part of the story.

Looking at your OP:

How can that be easy? Like my scene where I wanted the girls to be friends, you have a character that sounds to be entering complete culture shock. Regardless if this is a welcomed "new life", it can't be that easy!

You don't need to add characters for her to interact with that aren't important to the story. But you can add characters that are part of the military school setting.

Is it really that easy for this girl? Does she have second thoughts? Is it or is it not what she expected? Can you make whatever happens next, happen sooner?

If it's boring you might be making life too easy for your protagonist.

 

"And then the murders began."

 

Are you writing to entertain yourself or the reader? Develop an enthusiasm for the writing process. All that really matters is you have a story to tell, and someone to tell it to.

 

In my experience, when you're bored of what you're writing, something's usually wrong. Either the scene isn't needed, or the scene shouldn't unfold the way it has, or the story direction is wrong, or whatever you're trying to convey through the scene could be conveyed differently in a different scene. In short, you're probably doing something wrong When that happens, I tend to rewrite the same scene from scratch, or delete the scene altogether and go in a different direction. The rewrite always ends up being better if you feel something's wrong or boring, you're probably right.

 

Everyone addressed the need to skip over boring parts and work on the continuity issue.(a problem I have myself.)


But I interject.

Is this moment actually boring and needs to be cut out? I mean. Sounds like it happened after a harsh event. And it is a new situation for her. And could be a very stressful one.

This could be a perfect moment to allow the reader to breathe as well as introduce your new setting and all the stress or other thoughts it has on her.

Not saying this is right. But worth considering. I have had moments when I struggled to write a scene simply because I was more excited about a few chapters ahead.

Sometimes the problem can me. That you think there is a problem!