Today I had a scene I didn’t want to write.

I began it last night, but stopped before things went down, because a) I wasn’t sure exactly how everything would happen, and b) I’d met my word count for the day.

The scene: the MC confronts a relation at a very public, oh-lookit-the-community’s-all-here event. Yesterday, I kept running through my head all the options that would let MC off the hook–extricate herself without a huge public blowup. Her life really isn’t the public’s business, and she has more than enough on her plate already without having to deal with that kind of humiliation and stress. I found a solution that would do the trick, involving a different (and private) blow up later on.
It was all settled.

Except, when I woke up this morning, I knew it wasn’t.
The easy way out is, well, the easy way out, and there’s no way (in the world of my story) the MC’s relation wouldn’t throw the Screaming Fit From Hell. There just wasn’t.

I’m always saying that if you remain true to your characters, your story will write itself, because in any given situation there’s only so many ways your characters will act. They are who they are, this is how they behave, and if you want them to act differently you’ll have to change the situation–not the people.

So I sat at my computer with my coffee and headphones and wished myself anywhere else. Wishing my MC anywhere else–in a life where she didn’t have to go through this sticky, public hell.
But she isn’t, she just has her life.
And it’s not fair.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Because I made her deal.
The relation went from zero to sixty, bringing up resentments even I, as the author, didn’t know existed. The whole room went silent as everyone in the community got to hear a load of total, unjust bs about my MC, and I Hated. Every. Second. Of. It.

But I wrote it anyway, because that’s how it happened.

Because if her life was easy, my MC wouldn’t be who she is.

Because if she can’t overcome this, she’s not the person I take her for.

Related Posts

1. iPad: Pages and writing

   One of the things that excited me about the iPad was its writing possibilities. As much as I love my notebook, hauling it around is a pain–especially when I do all my hard core work (photo editing, site building) at…

Metainfo

I was thinking about your hesitancy to write your scene today, when I realised I’m the complete opposite. I love to write scenes where there’s drama! The harder to get out of, the better. The only one I didn’t like writing was the scene where Amy went to Lara’s house to confront her about Timothy’s journal …. That one made me nauseous, but usually I enjoy them, ’cause I like knowing that no matter how bad I let it get, I’m going to get her out of it. She’s going to be okay.

---

Comment RSS feed. TrackBack URL