The writing muse can be a harsh mistress indeed.
It has been quite a while since I updated my progress on The Dark Thorn. In the last article I wrote about it, titled The Healthy Writer (July 17th), I expanded upon my own struggles to find a balance between writing life and healthy lifestyle, where the two meet to get maximum output from both. I have spent these last six weeks focusing on my physical health, my diet and emotional wellness, reacquainting myself with long lost friends and enjoying the outdoor Seattle summer. It has been nice to reassert control over the entirety of who I am.
It has come, however, at the detriment of The Dark Thorn.
Now the balance between the craft of writing and the craft of living with healthy purpose has begun to find an equilibrium and I am once again working on The Dark Thorn. I needed to work on it again. It would not be ignored. The book called to me and it was time for me to answer it and begin rewriting.
If you remember, author Terry Brooks read The Dark Thorn and gave me some wonderful insight into how to strengthen the book overall. He enjoyed the story immensely but felt one of the four point of view characters was boring and did not sufficiently grow over the course of the tale. He was right. I knew it when I gave it to him and asked him to verify it.
Of course that point of view character, Bran Ardall, has half of the point of view chapters in the book.
Terry suggested I reduce that point of view character to a background character and instead tell those parts of the story through the eyes of Richard McAllister, his favorite character in the book.
So what would shifting the focus from Bran to Richard do to the structure of the story?
It changed the first ten or eleven chapters of the book and introduced numerous plot point problems that made my life hell for about the last three weeks.
I wondered then, over this last weekend, if it has taken me three weeks to solve my sticky plot point, how long had some writers gone to find a solution in their own work?
Writers Patrick Rothfuss, Peter V. Brett, Lev Grossman and Chris Evans weighed in.
How can one plot point become so sticky when all others fall into place? What do writers do to overcome these problems when they arise, when it seems nothing they do will find an answer to their frustration?
As with many problems, finding the solution to a particular plot point takes time—and patience.
Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the WInd
It depends on what you really mean by a plot point. I can say that there have been plot-centered issues that have taken me years to get to the point where I'm satisfied with them.
Years. That's right. Patrick said years to discover the answer to a plot-centered issue. While I'm happy I haven't had to spend years to find a solution to a sticky plot point, I can't say that it might not ever happen. I hope it won't. I know George R. R. Martin at the moment has one very difficult plot point that needs to be handled with care before A Dance With Dragons an be released.
In the case of Rothfuss and Martin, it's nice to see they take so much care in their craft that they are willing to spend many months to find the perfect solution—and hence give us a better book.
Peter V. Brett, author of The Warded Man
Six weeks, give or take. Chapter 17 of The Desert Spear, Keeping Up With the Dance, kicked my ass. I was pounding my head against the keyboard until the wee hours every single night of that time.It was worth it, though. It's now my favorite chapter in the book.
I have two or three chapters in The Dark Thorn that I think are my best. Like Peat, the chapters that required so much time and effort gave me a huge appreciation for them.
Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians
If I figured out a sticky plot point in three weeks I think I would be setting a personal land speed record. Well, that's not exactly true -- it either takes me 6 seconds or 6 months. Two years into writing The Magicians, I was still adding major plot strands, without which the book would be more or less unrecognizable now. If I don't have that instantaneous, pre-conscious aha moment, then it requires a lot of really serious mental processing power to nut out a plot point. My brother Austin (Grossman, author of Soon I Will Be Invinsible) says that one should just make the most awesome possible thing happen next. I try to follow that rule. But it's not always easy.
Look at Lev. Another writer who says it may take a while for a particuarly stick plot point to be resolved. For those of you out there fighting your own work right now, these are professional writers and they all are saying the same thing.
Chris Evans, author of The Light of Burning Shadows
At this point in my writing, my plotting style veers more to the free-form approach in that I envision the distant ending first in very general terms, a few main points I want to hit along the way, then begin working out the opening . The pluses to writing like this is it keeps everything fresh and I'm open to new avenues and plot twists that I might not have considered otherwise. The negative, or perhaps the better way to phrase that would be challenge in writing this way, is that I will find myself momentarily lost in the wilderness of my narrative searching for a clue to unlock the puzzle I've created. I remember one time struggling with how to get information to my characters over a great distance that fit within the logic of my fantasy world and added a bit of color to a traveling scene. I don't recall how long it took because my strategy to deal with conundrums is to let my subconscious take a crack at them while I move on to another section of the book. Eventually, an answer surfaces. In this instance it revealed itself as a drunk messenger pelican named Wobbly. He wound up on the cover of the Japanese edition so he's clearly made an impression which pleases me immensely.
Last week the solution to my most difficult plot point came to me while going for a walk. It just flashed right into my head and for a few hours afterward I felt truly daft that it took as long as it did.
With its occurrence though, I have begun rewriting in earnest. In fact, in the last three days I've finished two chapters that had been sitting mostly unfinished. It is amazing how one sticky plot point can stop a writer in their tracks.
Just know if you are having a problem with a plot point, the solution may be a walk away.
And if it takes months, just go with it.
The book will be better for it.
Leave a comment