I am having trouble getting a story off the ground; not an unusual thing for anyone who writes I know but I am not sure what to do. I have characters I like very much and an idea which won’t go away. I know what the second to last chapter will be and have written the ending but so far, about eight chapters into it, cannot seem to assemble the pieces into a place I feel will reach the conclusion.
In searching for direction, I turned to a wonderful book of craft essays by accomplished authors from Tin House Books called The Writer’s Notebook. It was a gift from a dear friend, another fledgling in the tall grass of prose. Writer Rick Bass, in his essay When to Keep It Simple, addresses the choices a writer faces “when a story isn’t working as well as it could be-or when it isn’t working at all-.”
Bass’ advice in this situation is wise and resembles the Winston Churchill mantra which is now a pop culture phenomenon “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Bass prescribes “stay calm and go back to basics, to try to show, in gestures, images and descriptions as simple as possible, what it is you’re trying to convey and not to try to do it all once, but break it down into pieces-when you have to.”
So, today I am going to go back from beginning and simplify. Try to streamline the direction and hopefully move the characters into the path which will advance my plot. Easily said, surely not easily done but that’s the challenge of this art, isn’t it?
No comments:
Post a Comment