On Simplicity
Sep. 18th, 2009 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavanya_sixSo there's a chapter I'm writing -- well, one part (of three) of a single chapter -- and I just spent the last three days banging my head against my desk because of a pacing problem. See, the gist of the sub-chapter is that Our Heroes are being chased by The Villains across the countryside until they finally fight. So it was set up like this:
Flashbacks of the Villain's Journey Up Until Now ---> Inter-cutting Flight Across a Mountain Landscape ---> Heroes and Villains See Each Other for the First Time Across A Steep Canyon and OMG RUN ---> Heroes Leave Mountains But Find No Safety In Countryside ---> Villains Chase Heroes to Abandoned Fort ---> BRAWL ---> People nearly killed, Our Heroes Escape, Our Heroine Vows Revenge
Except this doesn't fucking work and I couldn't figure out why. Until now. Why it doesn't work is that the section highlighted in red below...
Flashbacks of the Villain's Journey Up Until Now ---> Inter-cutting Flight Across a Mountain Landscape ---> Heroes and Villains See Each Other for the First Time Across A Steep Canyon and OMG RUN ---> Heroes Leave Mountains But Find No Safety In Countryside ---> Villains Chase Heroes to Abandoned Fort ---> BRAWL ---> People nearly killed, Our Heroes Escape, Our Heroine Vows Revenge
...that section? Doesn't need to exist! I was tearing my hair out because, on a level I wasn't aware of, I knew that the section in red was about 5,000 words of prose that didn't do anything to advance the story. It was just padding. So I moved the fort fight into the mountains and my writer's block dissolved. So now we have:
Flashbacks of the Villain's Journey Up Until Now ---> Inter-cutting Flight Across a Mountain Landscape ---> Villains Chase Heroes to Abandoned Fort ---> BRAWL ---> People nearly killed, Our Heroes Escape, Our Heroine Vows Revenge
Only now I have to worry about the fact it's 6,800 words and OMGWTF I haven't even set up the key fight scene. Chapter Bloat should be a TVtrope....
6,800 in less than a week. I'm going to kick NaNoWriMo's ass.
