Finding The Right Direction Thanks To The Wrong One.

Yesterday I sat down to write more of the script for Issue 26, which would be Chapter One of our next storyline.  The last time I sat down to work on this script I was on fire.  I was pounding out pages like they were nothing, and the flow of the story came to me very easily.  I never struggled with direction and everything was coming to me naturally.  I was in that wonderful (and sometimes elusive) zone, and I was sure the next time I sat down to write more of Issue 26 it would come to me just as easily.

Yesterday, that was not the case.

All my momentum came to a dead stop.  I found myself staring either at a blank screen or the unending blink of my cursor.  When dialogue or direction came to me it was stunted and forced, and I struggled to get scenes flowing with the same swift current of earlier pages.  I took the story in unexpected directions in an attempt to jolt myself out of this funk, making characters do nearly out-of-character things and relying on leaps of logic to make something work.  After several hours of work, I had both written several pages and accomplished nothing.  In the end, I scrapped everything and decided to try again tomorrow.

Well, I didn’t scrap everything.  I took a look at what I had once I determined I was done trying to make progress.  I looked back at where I had been and tried to find a clue to the “right” direction.  It was a wise decision, because some slight revisions to earlier scenes gave me a clear path forward.  I cut unnecessarily dramatic and complicated elements to focus on “keeping it simple.”  I was putting the spotlight on too many characters in an effort to look clever, so I narrowed the spotlight to essential characters.  As Frank Herbert said, “A beginning is a very delicate time.”  When I’m setting up a new storyline I find it’s best to keep the narrative moving forward simply and clearly.  There’s plenty of time to be complicated later.

My failed attempt at adding more to the script wasn’t a failure at all.  I was able to salvage scenes and dialogue from the scrapped material.  I spent so much time discovering what wouldn’t work that I found what would actually work for the story!

Mistakes always present opportunities to learn, if you’re willing to accept their lessons.