Writing a scene?

Happens to me all the time. The easiest way for me to get back into it is to play music the characters are into, or play music that fits the scene. There was also a scene I was having difficulty getting back into where my characters were eating Chinese takeout sesame chicken, so guess what I did for dinner that night? I wrote the scene while I was eating. Sounds crazy, but weird little mind tricks help.

Retyping the previous paragraph or two, or reading them back and editing them does work for me sometimes...especially if I can recreate the circumstances under which they were written the first time. (Was I burning incense? Did I have the TV on in the background to blur out the construction noise out on the street? Was I drinking a mug of tea?)

 

One technique I use from this guy

Spoiler: this guy

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/how-to-edit-your-book-in-4-steps

is to edit the previous day's work before writing anything new.

 

I'm surprised the above description doesn't work for you. It gives me all sorts of inspiring ideas
Ideally, you should have the tenacity to just sit down to work. If you want inspiration, maybe music can help. Technically, if the scene is not exciting for you enough to write it, it won't be exciting for the reader to read it either. You could start by doing a summary of the scene, which characters are in, what they want, what they have to achieve, what's stopping them, what's the setting like, etc. There's stuff like that in those writing software thingies, it's time consuming but can get your mind going in the right direction.

 

That sounds like a good strategy — I think I’ll use it.

 

Yes, but this isn't about how to write a scene, it's about how to get back into it once the momentum has been lost due to outside forces. When Mrs. A says it's dinner time, it might not be writing time for another 18 hours, and it can be hard to get that ball rolling again.

 

In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp advises this too. She used the analogy that, as a choreographer, if she didn't leave something in the tank, the next day's rehearsal or class would waste time with all the dancers standing around with nothing to do while she tried to figure out where the dance should go next.

 

I used to use that method, but then too often I'd try to get back to work only to be left thinking, What in the entire fuck was past-Izzy going for? What am I supposed to do with this? so ...

 

I get that problem a lot too. Most the time it's my dogs needing to go out or my dogs barking at nothing or my dogs wanting to play. But that's for a different time, different thread.

If you listen to music while writing or listen to music in general, I oftentimes know of a precise song that would be the soundtrack to that moment and I'll play that song or a playlist of songs and let the scene play out in my head. If I'm not yanked too, too far out of the zone I can start listening to that song(s) again to get me pumped up. Also, just stepping away for a couple minutes, allowing a bugger period between whatever distracted me and zoning back into the scene can help balance me out, psychologically. Getting pulled away can be frustrating, probably because of knowing that it's going to be a bitch to get zoned back in, so being fully aware of that and letting that roll off helps -- listen to the soundtrack while doing this too, let yourself get immersed into the scene, see it, feel it, smell it taste it, become the MC.

 

Another benefit of an outline is that you can sketch out a scene quickly. You come back the next day--the scene is only half written but the big ideas are already down on the page.

 

For some of you, that is. For some of us, outlining absolutely does not work. The biggest issue I'm having right now with my WIP is that I know the ending (which I never, ever do). It's causing me all kinds of pacing problems, and it's hell trying to get the writing to flow, because it's a completely unnatural way for me to write.

 

You're saying not everyone can use an outline to quickly sketch a scene?

 

It wouldn’t work for me, no.

 

That's exactly what I'm saying. I write very organically and usually don't know what's going to happen until it comes out of my fingertips.

Now, I'm dyslexic (the result of a viral infection) so there's no way an outline is ever going to happen. If someone needs one at some point, I'll literally have to hire someone to write one.

But my writing process has never worked that way. It's too limiting for the way I write. In school when we had to outline, my first question was "What percentage of the grade is this?" I'd even take the F for that part because I knew the writing part of the grade could make up for it.

ETA: I'm having more trouble writing my WIP now that I know the ending and there are plot points I have to wrap up than I've ever had trouble with in my life. I struggled for 200 words today. It just completely locks my creative process.

I don't outline my non-fiction work, either, other than a few occasional bullet points. But, I have a photographic memory so I reference my research by thumbing through it in my head. I can memorize complete long chapters of information and conversations verbatim.

 

An outline also goes out of your fingertips. It is no less organic and in no way confining. Where is the proof?

You could take your existing WIP right now and convert it into an outline.

An outline is simply condensed story. There is really no other difference.

 

I don't outline either. Guilty Pantser is guilty.

I like the thrill of surprising not only my characters,
but myself as well.

 

And the condensation for me is a huge difference. I need facial expressions, tones, gestures, the rustling of fabric, all that stuff, when I'm building a scene. I don't build a scene as a scaffolding of planned events and then paint those things on it. I'm not saying that doing so is in any way bad, I'm just saying that I don't.

 

It's just a tool. I don't receive any payment from the Bureau of Correct Creative Writing if I convince someone to try an outline.

 

...I'm not really seeing how this is responsive to the conversation.

 

It's responsive to the initial conversation--tips for getting back into a scene. If you're not sure how I can explain it to you in a PM, so that we don't keep derailing the thread...

 

It's a broad quote, however.

"Use your imagination, not your memory."

 

I honestly do this all the time. My current WIP, I dreamed over the course of about a week. I woke up every day, wrote down the scenes that I had dreamed in a separate document and when I found the right place to import it into the story, I just copied it over. So I will get tons of different ideas of things I want to include at some point and I always get them down before I forget what I wanted to do.

Yes, I'm weird.

 

No, I literally could not do that. Putting things in an ordered list is extremely difficult for someone who has my type of dyslexia. The scenes would end up being out of order.

ETA: You seem to be under the impression that everyone’s thought process and creative process works the same way. They do not.

You expecting everyone to crank out an outline to write to would be like me demanding that you recite chapter six of one of your college textbooks and all your childhood friends’ phone numbers. Hey, I can. Can’t everyone?

 

Of course if you have something like this you should maybe not attempt an outline. One thing I like to remind beginning writers in particular is that everything is just a tool--there's no right or wrong when it comes to writing. Maybe this particular thing will help you get back into a scene, or maybe it will be something else. All you can do is try things.

 

So, this is my first post here, but it's a question I've had on my mind for a while.

I have a writing process that has worked well for me in technical and academic writing, but as a beginner in fiction it's not been working for me.

My writing process is to begin by outlining the main points of my plot and create a list of scenes that need to be written. Since I have my required scenes listed, I find that I write the pivotal scenes first. I do this, partly, to allow some room for revision of the plot if I discover something interesting while writing those scenes. These also tend to be the scenes I'm most excited about, and they're usually up to my standard of quality. By the time I finish this, I usually find that I've written about 30-50% of a complete novel.

Where this process isn't working for me is everything between those scenes. These scenes, in my opinion anyway, are necessary for moving the plot forward. But they tend to fall flat. I tend to rush through them to get to the exciting parts, and it shows. I think part of this problem is that I'm not an author that can carry a bad scene on the merits of my prose alone. But, even if I was, it wouldn't really change the fact that the scenes are just boring, both to write and to read.

Completing the novel becomes an awful slog, and I end up either stalling completely or moving on to something else. I've ended up with several nearly finished novels, but I have yet to actually finish one.

My questions are these:
Do you have any suggestions from your own writing process that might help?
Do you have any general advice on these "in-between" scenes that can help keep them interesting, for me as an author, but particularly for the reader?