Q&A: What If My Scene Falls Apart While Writing It?

Question: Do you encounter instances where you're midway thru writing a planned scene, only to realize X doesn't make sense now that you're writing it out?

Answer: My plans change all the time. They have to, because "plan" is a fancy word for a list of things that won't happen.

Usually my plans are derailed by an action not making sense in character, or me having a better idea. Sometimes by plot holes, but that's more rare.

However, one of the advantages of my process is that this derailment and redirection tends to happen before the stage where I am writing literal text. Instead, it tends to happen when I am writing summaries of chapters or individual scenes. This makes it much easier to redirect.

One of the principles of software engineering is that mistakes are inevitably frequent, but they are cheap and easy to fix if detected early. The process of constantly creating new microplans and redirecting is almost instinctive after several decades of writing software.

That's not to say you should necessarily adopt my process to help you with this. No one can tell you how to write, they can only tell you how they write.

However, if I could give one piece of advice that is general enough to be useful to everyone, it would be this:

Do not fight this process. Do not struggle against it. Do not resent it. Do not view it as an interruption or an impediment.

Your brain is your friend. It is trying to help you. Every time it rejects an idea in midstream for not being good enough, it is making your story stronger and your voice more clear.

Original Post