How to Pull Yourself Through a Manuscript

(Motivation for Maxed-Out Writers)

The Renegade Writer posted “7 Motivation Hacks for Freelancers” a few days ago.  Some of the techniques work well for fiction authors, too – but not all.

Personally, I get most of my motivation to sit down and write from plotting in advance.

One of these days, we’ll have to have a good roll-up-your-sleeves debate on pantsters (those who write by the seat of their pants) versus plotters, as a writing resource that doesn’t tackle this dusty old dispute probably isn’t complete (sort of like Bailey’s without the ice).

But that’s not my topic for today.  Finding the motivation to sit down and write is.

It’s probably not a huge surprise that I plot my novels in advance of writing.  If you’ve been reading Anchored Authors for long, you’ve probably identified my geek tendencies already.  (After one or more of the aforementioned Baileys, I like to explain to lay people that I’m a contradiction in terms, an anal-rententive writer.)

I plot extensively, to the point where my first draft is very nearly my last.

As I’m building my detailed outline, I invariably find that there’s a scene in there that I’m itching to write. Usually it’s a high point in the story, often more than two-thirds of the way through the book.  If screenwriters were to analyse my stories, I’m sure they’d point out that these Yes!! scenes are the pivotal scenes between the second and last act of the classic three-act structure, or else they’re the key scene in the third act.

The scenes are highly emotional, and usually contain a major turning point in the plot.

Sometimes, though, the scene that lives in my mind for the next however-many-weeks it takes to write up to it is smaller, more intimate.  It might even be a single snap-shot moment, a real zinger of a moment, that I just so want to get down on paper.

Plotting in advance of writing allows me to identify that scene–or scenes.  Sometimes there’s a couple of scenes or moments tugging at me, but usually one of them has more torque than the other.

I know lots of writers that would sit down and write that scene immediately.  Get it down on paper while it’s hot.

To my mind, this is as good a way of murdering your motivation as any.  There’s a deflating sense of post-mortem once you’re done writing it.  All the excitement and drive has gone, and now you’ve got nothing but pedestrian scenes to crank out.

The sensation isn’t accurate, though.  Once you starting writing the book, the scenes take on a life of their own, and you get absorbed in the development of the story…but straight after writing the scene, the feeling that there’s nothing worthy left to write is a persistent and common one.

If you’ve written up to the scene, then you’ve got less than a third of the book left to write.  Momentum will take care of making sure you get back into the writing grove, and ensure you become absorbed in writing the story again.

But if the scene is the first scene you’ve written (even if it doesn’t come first in the book), then you’re going to have a tough job getting going on the rest of it.

If you’re a plotter, try this with your next book, or even the book you’re currently writing.  Is there a scene towards the end that you’ve been thinking about?  Playing out in your mind?  Even a little?

Deliberately start thinking about that scene and the consequences to the characters after it has played out.  How much trouble is it going to cause?  Are your readers going to weep, gasp, flip pages madly, miss dinner?

Whenever you get an idle moment, try out lines of dialogue, polish snippets of prose in your head.  Do not take notes!  Note-taking removes the scene from your head, along with the urgency to write it and capture it on the page.

Keep writing your way up to the scene, keep thinking about how much fabulous fun you’re going to have actually writing it.  And how thrilled you’ll be when you’ve nailed it to the page.

It’ll get you back to your desk each time you’re scheduled to write.

It’ll keep you going when you’re tired, cranky, and the writing session feels more like wading through treacle than a creative exercise.

If you’re a pantster, you’re already using a modified version of this technique.  Even if you think you’re not, you actually are already holding in your head as much of the story as you know it so far.  When you’re ruminating about what happens next, also extend the current story lines and toy with where they might end up.  Sooner or later, you’ll snag on the scene, the one scene you’ll work into the story no matter where it ends up, because the scene pulls and tugs and won’t let go.

Use your need to write that scene as impetus to write up to it.  Just like plotters, you should not take notes, or otherwise deplete any of the power of that scene as you constantly play it out in all its variations in your mind.

And just to twist back on myself, sometimes plotting in advance doesn’t give you the scene straight away, either.  In that case, you need to do what the pantsters must do:  Keep running over the plot lines in your head, thinking about the scenes ahead, and how they might play out.  Screw around with different settings, dialogue, etc.  Eventually, you’ll hit upon the scene, and you’re set.

First appeared on Anchored Authors, September 17, 2008

_____________

Tracy Cooper-Posey © 2009. Cannot be copied or distributed without permission.