I got stuck the other day. As an avid plotter, that never used to be the case. I was always full of ideas if I could just step back to think and note them somewhere. Every book is outlined scene by scene before I even put pen to page (or fingers to keyboard, I suppose). But as I was revising, I had an opening scene from an old draft that no longer fit the story. So I re-wrote it.
When I read it back, my heart sank. I was bored. Disinterested. But the worst part was I
didn't know why. All those feelings reinforced the idea that I don't know what I'm doing. Lo and behold, imposter syndrome snuck back in.
I read the scene a few times - surprise, it didn't get any better. Then I read past it to figure out where it was going. Finally, I gave up, and I legit Googled, "Why is my scene so boring?"
Ironically, it was actually a very helpful search for something so vague.
I clicked on the first article that came up. It was talking about different types of tension.
I've found in writing circles that there are specific topics that come up a lot: conflict, goals, stakes, etc. But tension isn't usually among those.
So what is tension?
Tension happens as your reader anticipates conflict (that thing that is stopping your character getting what they really want) impacting the thing your protagonist desires the most.
Suspense grows steadily throughout the course of a novel while the conflict remains unresolved.
It is essential to know that to create tension, you must first give your readers something to be afraid for; but be aware, being afraid of something is not the same as being afraid for something.
Source: Jericho Writers
While story elements like goals, stakes, and conflicts are important, it's actually tension that keeps a reader turning the page. It's the emotional investment of wondering what's going to happen. And it's all these elements working together that create an interesting story.
Doug Landsborough outlines four types of tension in his article Stress Your Readers Out: How to Write Tension in a Story
Tension of the Task
Tension of Relationships
Tension of Surprise
Tension of Mystery
What I realized through reading was my opening scene was lacking any of these.
The purpose was good. It introduced our MC and the world she lives in, what she wants (ultimate goal), and also what's standing in her way (conflict). Unfortunately, that all happens in dialogue with very little scene grounding and no tension whatsoever. It's very expository. (Honestly, as a writer, exposition is probably my least favourite thing. I know it needs to be there, but I would much rather write anything else!)
So the question became: where is the tension? Where is the scene going?
When I started to look at the trajectory, I noticed there wasn't any.
I've heard V.E. Schwab talk about looking at each scene/chapter in a book as it's own little story. Cutting things up into bitesize pieces to make it more manageable. Meaning every scene needs its own beginning, middle, and end.
That's where my problem was. The opening scene actually started in the middle. There was no beginning - no build-up to an Inciting Incident. The MC had already achieved her first goal, and we never even saw it.
What was important was to establish her first goal and to introduce conflicts on the road to achieving it (Tension of the Task). By starting in the middle, I'd sucked all intrigue out of the scene. We knew largely where she was going (ultimate goal), but on that micro scale the writing fell flat.
In the opening scene, the MC is trying to escape her duties, hide in her own palace. We meet her already hiding and just about to be found. So I need to introduce how she reached her hiding place, and why she was going there to begin with.
It seems so obvious looking back at it, but I often reach a point where I just don't know how to fix things anymore. That's when I rely on my critique partners to tell me how something is coming across. It gives me insight into how to change a scene. And as an underwriter (my first drafts are always under word count and I build them out as I revise), scenes typically need a lot of grounding on later drafts. It's sometimes hard to know what specifically needs to be built on.
I'm only on the second draft of this particular story (Manuscript 4), so it still has a long way to go before it's close to finished. Now I want to scan through the whole thing to stress-test the structure of each individual scene. Something I've never done before, but I feel like it can only help. I'm at the point where I need to look at the story in a new way anyways.
Hopefully this will do the trick!
How do you troubleshoot stuck scenes?