Personally, I spend most of my time developing my characters. It takes a while to build their personalities and life stories (feels like I'm creating a whole new person), but after that's done, it becomes extremely easy to navigate them within the story, because I know exactly how and why they will react/behave the way they do. Now all I need to do is put them in situations that will bring forth the traits and behaviours I want them to display. I was wondering what others find is the most challenging to develop?
Probably has to be the characters for me, but it also would have to be getting that said person to be able to react correctly for a key point in the plot to work. Also, the plot itself. You may have the beginning and end in mind, but everything in between is a battleground for ideas.
Plot and characters, for me anyway, develop over the course of writing the story. My challenge is to guide that development so it's consistent and logical for each character and for the story overall. I like both to surprise me - but I need to make sure it's a surprise and not a WTF?!
Yeah, now that you mention it, it took me some time to really learn how to pace a story. Sometimes its too fast, other times it's too slow. I think maybe it comes with practice? I've encountered this as well.
Beta readers can be a big help with this, once you give them a finished draft. Get them to tell you where the story drags for them, and what bits seem to go by too quickly.
I find it hard to develop characters' voices and the narrative voice. I need to put a lot of effort into making my writing not sound dry and matter-of-fact.
Believability & pace. I can create characters somewhat with ease. I can come up with setting and find a plot. But the believability I'm always trying to keep in check. The how - as in how do I make this believable is a more important question to answer rather than what color are my mc's eyes. Pace is like believability it's guesswork, and gut instinct - knowing how long to drag out a scene and how to transition.
As I've been editing for quite some time, now (and getting some terrific feedback), I realize I struggle the most with balancing not spoonfeeding the reader with making sure the reader has everything (s)he needs to know to understand the story.
I struggled with this too actually, and for a while. It wasn't until a friend told me, "Just trust that the reader will do their part. After all, if they're reading your story, it means they're willing to participate." I still find it hard to do though, because often I feel like if I leave out certain details, I'm not doing a good enough job at being descriptive. It's a work in progress I suppose.
Actually, my problem was the opposite - my project is a historical novel, and I was omitting historical references that I knew but the reader did not.
The hardest part for me is getting the clunkiness out of my prose. I seem to be blind to it while I'm writing and only notice when I go back and reread days later.
The most challenging for me is to control the development: as in keep everything contained and relevant. I've a habit of letting the story grow too large and drift too far away from the point, fooling myself into thinking these sub-plots are necessary for character development. The last two times I had professionals critique my work (different pieces) they both recommended cutting content and/or characters.
The beginning third of the story is the hardest. Yep, I always have trouble coming up with the right setting to get things going.
Plot and believability. I have quite a good sense for pacing and I find characterization isn't too much of a problem. Plus, I'd add another thing and that is that little something that makes the story memorable and not just average. I think that's what I most want to learn. And I think I might just be on to that for my upcoming story. At least I hope so. I just looove plotting, I think that's the most creative and joyful part for me.
