Making Everything Okay
I expect that every writer has certain tendencies they have to be on guard against. Things they instinctively do that they have to prevent, catch in the act, or fix later. One of my biggest problems is a desire to make everything okay.
It’s the same desire you have as a reader. (At least most of the time.) You want the sympathetic characters to be all right, to reconcile problems, to be happy. As a reader that desire is part of what keeps you reading, hoping that everything the characters are going through will turn out okay in the end. That means, of course, that part of my job as the author is to make sure you don’t know until the end whether or not it will be okay. To keep the tension high.
Occasionally I’ll realize that I’m writing a scene to help out my protagonist. She’s reconciling with a family member, resting and re-hashing information, being protected, whatever it happens to be. I have to remind myself that I’m not wrapping up problems yet. I still have to throw a few more rocks at her before I can get her down from the tree. So I backtrack a bit and toss another problem at her.
It’s an interesting thing to watch. I enjoy writing terrible, emotionally wrenching scenes and what have you, but if I’m not paying attention I automatically slip into let’s-fix-this mode. It might be something I’ll grow out of as a writer, I suppose. If I do I’m sure there’ll be another problematic tendency to take its place.
I didn’t get as much written this weekend as I wanted to because I was dealing with my sagging-middle-of-the-book problem as well as recovering from another making-everything-okay scene. I had written in the older draft that after an exciting, dangerous close shave, she’s reunited with friends and family, everyone regroups, and they go on to something else. I was trying to write that scene, but it was giving me a red flag. Nope, not working, it said. Throw more rocks, remember?
So I deleted a couple thousand words and came up with a completely new scene that I’m pretty excited about. I got about 1600 words done on it yesterday, and it came along nicely this morning too. I still don’t know what’s going to happen next, but this should give me some interesting opportunities.