Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction:
What to do when you’re stuck:
1. Track back through the story until you find where you went down the blind alley. Work forward again from there.
2. If a character is going off-script, either you don’t know enough about the character, or you now now enough that you realise she wouldn’t do what you originally planned. Either give her her head and see what happens, or change the circumstances until she will do what you wanted.
3. If you’re bored, scale back or eliminate the part that bores you.
4. If you’re stuck for a name, place, date or fact, put in a placeholder (marked in a way you can easily find when editing) and move on. Often, you’ll solve it shortly afterwards anyway, if you regain your forward momentum.
#shortfiction
I like square brackets for my placeholders. They’re easy to input (single key stroke) and not used normally within the text, plus there’s a lot of flexibility. Some of my favorites have included “like a [metaphor]” or “[some handwavey bullshit]”.
I like square brackets for my placeholders. They’re easy to input (single key stroke) and not used normally within the text, plus there’s a lot of flexibility. Some of my favorites have included “like a [metaphor]” or “[some handwavey bullshit]”.
Yeah, I use them too.
Yeah, I use them too.
Yup big fan of this series. Thanks for sharing these.
Yup big fan of this series. Thanks for sharing these.