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Sometimes, it's not the writing itself that's off—it's the plot behind it.
When this happens, a writer is faced with many options: come back to it and try to fix the problem later, fix the reasoning or motivation surrounding the decision or outcome, or rewrite the plot point entirely.
The latter tends to sound least appealing to writers—just the word "rewrite" often makes us want to curl up with our manuscript in a corner and hide. But when the plot itself is the issue, it's often helpful to consider rethinking the plot point that needs adjusting, then rewriting it rather than reliving what you already wrote.
What I'm saying is sometimes it's helpful to explore alternate universes within your WIP.
Let's say your protagonist gets in a fist fight with a rival or another character he dislikes. In your current version your protagonist gets hit a couple times, then knocks the rival out, but the fight goes too quickly and it doesn't have much impact. Rather than rewriting the scene as is, you might want to try exploring other versions of the fight.
For example:
- Version A: Your protagonist goes in believing this will be an easy fight, starts off strong, then gets hit hard enough to knock him off balance (or injure him) and the rival gets the upper hand.
- Version B: Your protagonist gets hit a couple times, then overwhelms the rival. Rather than giving up, however, the rival pulls out a knife.
- Version C: Your protagonist wins the fight, then the rival attacks him from behind as he walks away.
- Version D: Your protagonist wins the fight, but goes overboard and injures the rival more than intended.
These are only a couple of options, but the point is this: when something in your story isn't working, you can always try out other possibilities. The best part is if you decide you don't like the way your alternate universe experiment turned out, you don't have to include it in your WIP. If you do decide you like the way your AU turned out better than the original, however, then you now have a more dynamic scene.
It's a win-win scenario, and it's one that I hope you experiment with.
Have you ever tried this type of rewriting? If so, how did it turn out? If not, what do you do to fix unremarkable scenes?
15 comments:
I haven't reached the (major) fight scene in my WiP yet, so this is food for thought. Thanks for suggesting these different avenues to take should my scene turn out a little less engaging as expected.
This article is really worth reading, it has too much details in it and yet it is so simple to understand
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Happy to help, Khai! :)
I have spent most of my writing time today going over alternate scenes, so this was quite timely. I was stuck with a scene, and had thought of one other possible way it might work better. After reading your four possibilities, I am inspired to try a few others just to see how they affect the flow of things. Thanks!
And it applies to other "fights" too. You make some great points, and rewriting things in different ways has often helped me to sort some crazy plot point out.
You're very welcome, Chris! Being open to playing around with the way a scene turns out can be very helpful while writing. Best of luck!
Glad it helped, Emily! And you're absolutely right--the alternate outcomes technique can be applied to many different situations.
This is a great idea. I'm usually loathe to change stuff so drastically because I feel once it is written down its in stone, that's what happened, but I like this idea. Particularly exploring the different impacts of each possibility
Thanks, Matthew! As a bonus, brainstorming different possibilities can actually be pretty entertaining and somewhat freeing--you don't have to worry about ruining anything because whatever you brainstorm doesn't have to actually end up in the WIP, and sometimes the results are better than what you originally planned.
I love the idea of doing the alternate reality check (also appeals to my fantasy-writing bent). I've been stuck lately and instead of noting down a few different options have tended to write the whole thing out before deciding it didn't work. Off to create some alternate views and see if something pops! Thanks!
You're very welcome! Glad to hear you found the post helpful and best of luck with your alternate realities! :)
Yeah I just have a strange feeling that what I write is how it happens and if I write other ways then later I may refer to stuff that hasn't actually happened in the final story!
Well in that case, you don't necessarily have to write out every brainstorming scene--you could just write down some potential plot points in the alternate scene. Then, if you decide your alternate scene sounds like it might be better than your original you could write it out and see. Perhaps that would help?
Definitely a good idea. What if I need to change a plot point that kind of sucks, but it makes it impossible to reach another plot point that is entirely awesome? I'm dealing with this issue snow. I want to change something in my WIP, but I don't want to change how it ends too drastically!
While it the answer definitely depends on the specific situation, my suspicion is that with enough brainstorming, you could probably change the in-between plot points and still lead up to a similar ending. It'll just take some cleverness on your part. :)
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