2nd Draft- Stuck in Existing Scenes

[Wayne Mack]

One of the main weaknesses at this point is that the character arcs aren't very arcy.

I would tread carefully in your analysis of story issues. A story weakness might be that a main character is not interesting. Adding a character arc is one possible solution, but there are many interesting characters who do not undergo any transformation. It is often the case in mystery stories that the protagonist starts out highly competent and remains so throughout the story until her or she reveals the solution to the mystery at the end.

It may be the correct decision to give a character arc to one or more primary characters, but don't force an arc if it is not needed. Don't don't add a character arc just because someone's writing advice says that it is needed. Let your characters be who you think they should be.

 

[HareBrain]

It may be the correct decision to give a character arc to one or more primary characters, but don't force an arc if it is not needed. Don't don't add a character arc just because someone's writing advice says that it is needed. Let your characters be who you think they should be.

Apart from the double negative ( ) this is excellent advice. There's a danger that too close attention to the mechanics of story and plot can make your characters feel, well, mechanical.

There's an argument against character arcs. I don't necessarily subscribe to it, but it's worth thinking about. A character who undergoes an arc can only be their "perfect self" at one point of it. If you invent a character with a clear vision of who they are, by putting them through an arc you rob most of the story of that character being that clearly-envisioned self, whether that's them at the start or the end. If, however, you invent a character with a clear sense of the journey they undergo, then they will need an arc -- but then they will probably have that automatically.

If they have arcs but you mean they aren't "arcy" in the sense that you can't summarise them in a pithy sentence, I wouldn't worry too much about that particularly. Summarising arcs isn't what most readers tend to do -- that's for people who post analysis videos on YouTube. Adding an arc to a character that doesn't already have one sounds quite difficult. Clarifying or emphasising an arc might work, though.

 

[The Big Peat]

@The Big Peat Thanks! One of the main weaknesses at this point is that the character arcs aren't very arcy.

Is this a weakness because the book's plot feels like it needs more events, or because the characters aren't shining in the way you think they should?

And do you have a solution in mind?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Is this a weakness because the book's plot feels like it needs more events, or because the characters aren't shining in the way you think they should?

That's a good question that The Big Peat asks.

And it reminds me of something that happened back in the days when I first became truly dedicated to my writing and to finishing the novel I was working on—because I had finally thought of a story that really possessed me and a plot and characters that I truly cared about. But the problem was that while the story in my mind was vibrant, fabulous, what appeared on the page was considerably less so. It had flashes of something good, but overall it seemed too vague, too flat, too dull. Obviously, it needed more complexity, thought I, and length (after several drafts it would have only been about a hundred pages long in print).

So I kept adding events. I will admit that the additional events did sometimes give the characters opportunities for growth and/or to reveal more about who they really were, but while adding the events did solve some problems, they by no means solved all of them. (It was still much too short. No publisher, thought I, was going to buy a novel of considerably less than 200 pages.) So I added still more events. Well, the story and the characters still lacked something. In hindsight I can see that while adding a greater proportion of happenings did bring some improvements, it was becoming an endless process. It could have gone on that way forever. I suspect for a lot of aspiring writers who never do finish the great epic they are working on it is an endless process.

But I got lucky, or maybe just the work that went into writing and trying to polish all of those unsatisfactory drafts paid off. My writing ability took a great leap forward. (Not that I am saying I became a great writer or anything like that, but compared to what I was before the difference was considerable.) Consciously, I hadn't learned what the story was missing (and in those days there was no internet to go to for advice and I had not yet joined a writer's group so there was no one to define what was wrong and give me suggestions), but subconsciously, intuitively I knew what I had to do. And suddenly the story gained complexity and length!

So my point is, sometimes when you feel like you are never going to figure things out or get any better, suddenly you do. I don't think it is like this for everyone, but for some of us it can be more like an epiphany (and just as mysterious) than a conscious process with recognizable steps. It may take a discouraging amount of time and work to reach that point, but it could be just around the corner when you least expect it.

So if you really care about your WIP and writing stories really matters to you—you love the actual act of writing (even if sometimes, also, you hate it), rather than just loving the idea of being a writer*, DON'T give up just because you are stuck for however long you are stuck. Because you might be only weeks or days or hours or even minutes away from the epiphany, and if you quit now you will never know how close you came.
______

*For those people who are just in love with the thought of being a writer, and who don't actually get satisfaction from the writing itself, they'd be better off leaving the writing to those who do love it, and find something else, something satisfying, to occupy their time. But I doubt that anyone who has written at least one complete draft and is now editing and/or revising is one of those people.

 

[sknox]

>sometimes when you feel like you are never going to figure things out or get any better, suddenly you do
This. Even when the figuring out part isn't sudden but is gradual. But the feeling like you'll never figure it out is pretty near universal, especially with first book or second book. Or fourth *sigh*.

And also a plus one on that business of loving the idea of being a writer. I can't say I love the act of writing; for me, it's more of a compulsion. It's that I have never been not writing, whether it was non-fiction or fiction. I've been fortunate in that the idea of being a writer was never the appeal for me. I do now tell people I'm a writer, but that's mainly because I'm retired and I no longer have the cover of a day job. <grin>

 

[Dragonlady]

Is this a weakness because the book's plot feels like it needs more events, or because the characters aren't shining in the way you think they should?

And do you have a solution in mind?

It's partly that I know what the characters' growth should be but they start the story too finished, they don't actually have that growth as much as they should. (to overcome his self doubt, he actually needs to demonstrate some, for example). I'm looking at save the cat at the moment as a pointer to which bits of the story might need strengthening, alongside plotting out the different threads of the story- the people/romance threads and the mystery plot to look at the bits that have got lost.

 

[The Big Peat]

It's partly that I know what the characters' growth should be but they start the story too finished, they don't actually have that growth as much as they should. (to overcome his self doubt, he actually needs to demonstrate some, for example). I'm looking at save the cat at the moment as a pointer to which bits of the story might need strengthening, alongside plotting out the different threads of the story- the people/romance threads and the mystery plot to look at the bits that have got lost.

1) Have you considered pivoting to a story where not much changes about the characters? It's generally not the best option, but it works well for some stories, and if that's what your characters are maybe it's easiest to roll with it. The Princess Bride is a classic even if none of the characters change all that much. Ditto Indiana Jones (okay, it's easier to do on screen).

2) If you don't want to do that - have you written the scenes where they demonstrate their growth? An easy way to find the scenes needed to show their problems is to make scenes that mirror the way they solve their problems.

3) Look at the scenes, the decisions, the events in which things become more complicated and harder to overcome for the characters. Why do they happen? Can you put the character's flaws that they need to discover in there as major things? It's the logical place for them to occur.