Severely blocked at last scene

[Rufus Coppertop]

I'm having an absolutely hideous time with my final scene and keep running into a severe blockage that paralyses me.

The good guys have some seriously good magical kit and so does the bad guy.

On the one hand, there's no tension because the good guys have such excellent resources and capacity.

On the other hand, the bad guy can bring dark forces to bear and negate what the good guys have.

It's like a stalemate that stops me from completing the rewrite of the final scene. I've been paralysed like this for months. The rewrite should be fun. I thought I'd solved it with a mega twist but it's gone from being a placeholder scene that I churned out just to finish the first draft to being a mega stalemate.

I just needed to ventilate that fact. I have no idea what advice anyone could give to help with this. It's been a problem for almost a year and the WIP is huge, detailed and lots of fun. I can't bear to abandon it, I can't bear to take a lengthy holiday from it because I've tried that and it doesn't help.

Oy! It's soooooooooo frustrating.

 

[ckatt]

I once heard someone say that if you have a problem in the finale it's really a problem with the first act.
So maybe looking back there, will help.
What have you set up, or not set up, that can guide you now?

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

Thanks for trying to help but I think I'll ask the mods to delete the thread. There's no problem I can see with the first act nor the second nor the third up to the actual climax. Gutting something that's 250 thousand words long and turning into something other than what it is just isn't an option. I've spent the last six years on it. I'm not throwing that away. I'll just have to plow through and finish it somehow.

 

[ckatt]

I wouldn't suggest you gut any. Just that the answer to your problem might be found elsewhere.
Sometimes the solution isn't in the section where you feel the friction.

 

[Harpo]

Could you somehow rearrange the order of scenes? Like in a “Pulp Fiction” manner?

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

Not a hope. On the bright side though, I think I've identified the problem.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Perhaps the conclusion is a stalemate; neither side defeats the other. What would a stalemate look like? How would each side restrict its own activities in order to avoid a major head to head? What sort of minor incursions might each side choose to ignore rather than risk provocation?

If you want to go dark, there is the opposite approach. The two sides go at each other resulting in the total annihilation of both.

There is also the option of introducing a third party to the conflict, though I would advice against that approach. It would seem to come out of nowhere and not be very satisfying to the reader.

 

[Toby Frost]

Why isn't there any tension? If the good guys are heavily equipped, but the villain can outclass them, that's surely tension right there. The tension could just be that the heroes worry that what they've got just isn't enough. Surely there's come a point where they're both running low on strength, resources or whatever, and it'll come down to skill and intelligence. Someone pulls a clever trick, and that leads to an interesting conclusion. At least, I think that's how I'd do it.

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

Why isn't there any tension? If the good guys are heavily equipped, but the villain can outclass them, that's surely tension right there. The tension could just be that the heroes worry that what they've got just isn't enough. Surely there's come a point where they're both running low on strength, resources or whatever, and it'll come down to skill and intelligence. Someone pulls a clever trick, and that leads to an interesting conclusion. At least, I think that's how I'd do it.

I've done some work on it and planned out the rest of the scene and should get it finished within a couple of days...........finally! On the bright side, avoiding this final scene has caused me to do lots of rewriting and editing of everything that came before.

I'm pretty sure I've worked out the problem. I just needed to get the hell out of my own way and let the characters do their job.

Their job of course being, to act according to what THEY know and not what Mr Smarty Pants Omniscient Author Boss Man knows.