Despite the lack of motivation that I've been suffering from during the last week or so, I'm happy to report that progress has officially been made on my latest project, Dangerous Waters.
I've been trying to rework this project, which I've written once, and am currently in the process of giving a complete overhaul, for a couple of weeks now, though only seriously since I finished Pandora and sent that out to my last beta reader before it moves onto the stage of agents (scary!). But this last week, I had stalled out on it.
I was worried it was because of how I was planning it out. Rather than doing a full on planning (which I didn't think necessary, as the story has already been written once, no matter how different it's going to be when I'm done) I've been using the cork board I bought to help me figure out the restructuring Pandora currently went through.
The last time I worked on it, I had nine chapters up on the board and absolutely no idea on where the story was going. In fact, those nine chapters weren't very good. Okay, it wasn't the chapters themselves, just the order (and the emphasis I was putting on them).
I figured out the problem, eventually. The novel centres around three women (who are the main characters of the entire series) and I was trying to give them all equal say in the novel. In order to do that, I was structuring it very specifically, making sure that they each got a turn one after the other.
Needless to say, it wasn't going over very well. So, I decided that one of the characters needed to be the main POV, whether or not the tension of the story revolved around her. When I figured that out, I tried to restructure again, this time giving her twice as many chapters as the other two.
Again I found myself looking at those opening chapters and thinking that they just weren't right. There wasn't enough action, or plot, or even world building. They all felt like filler chapters, and that couldn't happen.
So tonight, when I finally decided that enough was enough and I was going to get some work done or die trying (okay...I wasn't actually willing to die over getting work done...but, hey, I'm a writer, I'm allowed to exaggerate) I sat down and stared at the board.
It took a while to get into it. At first all that happened was taking down the cue cards and trying to figure out what was wrong with them. Eventually, though, I managed to get that ball rolling. Scene after scene started to present itself to me. And, rather than focusing on whose POV was being used, I focused on where the story needed to go, and what would help me get there.
As a result there are currently seventeen chapters up on the cork board. And the best part? They feel right! Like the story is actually moving, and there's enough tension and plot to not stall out!
I'm pretty excited to rework this project. It was one of my favourites, and I know that my critique group will be happy too. I can't wait to see what the final result will be. I have a good feeling, though. This novel is going to go somewhere. Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm going to work on next.
Do you have any tips on how to get past those block? How do you figure out what POV each scene needs to be from?
You know, I don't think there really are any tips for getting past these kinds of blocks. You just have to work through them. I too have had problems with POV in the past. I had to make the difficult decision in my current WIP to drop all the other points of view other than my main character. And that really bummed me out, but was the correct decision.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are on the right track though! Congrats!