Scene Suck

Sometimes a scene doesn't do much of anything. Have you noticed? It doesn't provide any additional information about a character; it doesn't propel the story forward; it feels like filler.

How do you react when you read one of those scenes?

• Do you even realize it at the time, or do you wonder later why that scene was in the story? 
• Is it irrelevant to you?
• Are you mildly disgruntled?
• Are you over the top ticked-off and feel cheated?

I'm working on a scene now for my new book that I really want in the story. It does show some additional characterization but I think it needs to also do something for the plot. 

Without contrivance.

I've decided to give myself a day, two at the most, to see if I can dream up something that would work. If I can't, my single-mother detective isn't going to meet up with the new guy in town who's a volunteer firefighter as well as a professor at the local college.

Just sayin'.

It's all better with friends.

Stinkers and Gold, Stinkers and Gold

At this very second, I'm reading through the last sixty-five or seventy pages of the manuscript I'm in the middle of writing to try and get back in the flow of the story. Literally, I have them sitting right next to my hands as I write this post.

I may have toasted during the holidays, but they made toast out of me as far as my work is concerned, and this is the best and quickest way I can think of to get back on track.

The point of this exercise is not to edit, but to get caught back up in the plot and the characters. And it's working. But here's what's weird: some of these scenes are in dire need of editing, which doesn't surprise me too much, other than wondering how I wrote such drivel. Others, even though this is the shitty first draft stage, don't need touched. (Well, a caveat here: no one else has seen them, so there is probably something that needs fixin'. Just nowhere near some others I'm reading.)

Why are some of them stinkers and the others gold? And how can I make sure, when I'm committed to bichok, that I'm in the gold mode?

Writers, do you have control over this? Please share.
Readers, have you ever read a published book and been aware that certain scenes needed work?



CR: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

It's all better with friends.

Duh-Dum, Duh-Dum, Duh-Dum

So I'm sitting here, feeling a little smug. In control. Upward and onward with my edits. Kind of liking that my more recently written scenes in my SFD weren't requiring the same kind of gagging overhaul the earlier ones did. The really hard work was done.

I saw nothing but calm seas ahead of me.

I should've known something was about to happen when I heard the theme from Jaws begin to rumble in the air around me.

Has that ever happened to you? A shark attack out of the blue?

What happened was I got a couple of critiques back from my writing partners.

Both of them were all over my character motivations and responses to danger. They were relentless. In the spirit of the season, I tried picturing them (two gorgeous blondes) as wicked hags with warts on their noses.

How could they? And especially . . . How could they be so right???

In other words, the writing wasn't so bad, but the storyline, at this particular point, stinks. Like that shark bait . . . what's it called? Chum?

Aaargh!

I hate it when I'm thinking I don't have to think so much and then someone forces the issue.

But I showed them. Well, I'm gonna show them. I figured it out.

Now to write it.

CR: Green by Ted Dekker

It's all better with friends.