What he said...

I've been writing long enough now to recognize that in every book there will be scenes that nearly kill you in the writing of them. It may not even be an emotional, climactic scene. I don't know why it is that some scenes do this--refuse to die, as I call it--and others don't. I can't even predict which ones are going to make me wrestle them to the ground and which ones will go quietly. I was intrigued, then, to discover that this happens to screenwriters as well and John August, whose blog I LOVE, talks about what he does to work through the scene. What I found most interesting is that the questions he asks himself are some of the same I use when I'm wrestling with a difficult scene. (And it is wrestling--sweaty, backbreaking, frustrating, so close to pinning it down and yet so far.) ETA: Not that it would be surprising for a novelist and a screenwriter to use similar questions, but I was surprised to find that many of the questions I sort of discovered on my own, after hours or days of head pounding against the wall struggling, are ones he has and uses as well. So...cool! I must be doing something right! : )

The following is from his blog entry called the Six Hour Scene:

After writing three comparatively easy scenes, I took another stab at it. I asked some obvious-but-necessary questions:

• Was I starting at the right place?
• Was I ending at the right place?
• Could another character drive the scene?
• Would changing the location help?
• Did it need to be two scenes, rather than one?
• Did the scene even need to exist?

The answers confirmed my frustration: it was the right scene. It was just a bitch to write.

Jump over to his site and read the whole entry. It's both interesting and helpful, a rare combination in the world of writing advice, IMO.

: )