Writer’s Block: Writing Through a Tough Scene

Difficult scenes are perhaps the biggest part of my own personal brand of Writer’s Block.

When I say difficult scenes, I don’t mean emotionally difficult, such as penning a beloved character’s death, a torture scene, or characters saying goodbye. What I mean is a scene that is technically difficult to write, from concept to execution.

Sometimes, standing from the outside looking in makes it easier to see the solution than if you were the actual writer. Writers tend to get lost in their own manuscripts, so constructive outsider advice is welcome, and a great reason to belong to a writing group. I am without such a group right now, but at least I have a good friend to hash scenes out with.

When I procrastinate with writing, it’s always because I’m stuck. And when I’m stuck, it’s because I’m facing down a particularly difficult scene.

Every new scene is intimidating, even the “easy” ones. I can tell if a scene is working or not by the middle. If the pacing feels off or the scene feels aimless, maybe a conversation is dragging on. Maybe my angle of approach is all off.

Difficult scenes can be:

• Scenes with dialogue that needs to be precise and deliver a good amount of important information, but I’m not sure how much.
• Scenes with clever characters, but I can’t think of anything clever enough for them to say.
• Scenes with complex setups, complex staging, and complex goals.

How do I get through such scenes? Sometimes it’s through brute force. I go back to where I felt the writing was decent, and then I try to smooth things out by correcting/rewriting/prodding/shifting where it starts to feel “off”, trying to match the quality of what came before. This momentum helps me break into the problem scene. And little by little, it becomes more serviceable. But usually, I find the answer lies in simplifying the scene.

There’s this scene I once wrote where a character is in the desert near an encampment. She’s busy drawing water when someone calls out to her that her prisoner has awakened from his coma. She’s been dreading this day, so she drops the bucket and hurries to where the prisoner’s being held, and the guard confronts her with various concerns for her safety.

After the discussion, she goes inside to confront the prisoner. Both have many questions for each other, but by this point in the story, their relationship has become intricate and complicated. There’s distrust between the two, hence why he’s currently a prisoner.

I’ll pause here to say that the beginning was too cantankerous. Especially the bit with walking through the encampment and meeting the guard outside. A description of the camp and the discussion outside wasn’t necessary. This is easy enough to fix, but the conversation with the prisoner was what really overwhelmed me.

How should the conversation between the woman and the prisoner even begin? How much information do I want to convey to the reader? How much information should the characters share with each other? From which point of view should this sequence be told?

Both POVs are interesting and have their pros and cons, but I wanted to keep the reader distant from the prisoner’s thoughts. Not to hide crucial information from the reader, but for… pretentious literary reasons.

Carrying on…

In the middle of the heated conversation, a courteous young caravan boy briefly enters and places the retrieved bucket nearby, now full of water. She acknowledges and thanks the boy, but by the end of the conversation, emotions have flared and she leaves the room–and the bucket–behind, which the prisoner later uses to slip out of his bondage and escape.

Simplifying this scene took longer than I’d care to admit. It still starts out the same, with her retrieving the water. We learn her concerns and private thoughts about the prisoner.

After she’s notified the prisoner has awakened, she drops the bucket and runs, and we switch immediately to the prisoner. Boom – No more having to write about the long walk to get to where the prisoner’s held, no more worrying about the guard’s concerns. The introduction is no longer slow and plodding. Any details we needed to know from the guard conversation could’ve been overheard by the prisoner, if necessary.

Once I allowed readers to be in the prisoner’s head, the conversation smoothed itself out, for the most part. We got enough of the woman’s thoughts from the introduction scene, so it turned out both POVs were necessary to complete the scene.

Perfectionism is my old enemy. I want to get these scenes right the first time, even the conversations, but that’s not realistic. I keep telling myself how much information I convey can always be adjusted later. It can be cranked up or trimmed down, depending on the needs of the story as it unfolds.

There’s nothing worse than getting stuck. I don’t like banging my head against the wall until a tough scene works. It’s a hassle. It’s the part of writing I enjoy least. So more often than not, I set aside the keyboard and come crawling back months later, no further than I was before. And to make matters worse, the story’s no longer fresh in my mind.

But maybe I’m thinking about it wrong: If I’ve come across a dead end, that could mean I’m treading new, exciting ground. If the answers are surprising me, surely it has a good chance of surprising my readers too, right? I should be excited when this happens! In fact, if I’m not coming across any of these moments, that could mean my story is too formulaic.

As a last resort, I could write a basic summary of the scene AND what I want the outcome to be. I can’t just write “so-and-so have a heated argument”. The outcome is the most important part and must be there, too. “Outcome: She leaves in a hurry, feeling like things are worse off than if she’d simply left him alone. Even so, he is intrigued by her.”

The outcome is crucial. It’s the bare minimum. Without it, I can’t move on.