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Tips for "Speedwriting" Tedious Scenes in the First Draft?

Ok...so are you calling speed writing sessions trashy then? Can you do your best to focus on producing good story during those sessions? It's not about produing perfection; it's about producing cleaner work. Can you take the trashy out of it?
Well, trashy in the sense of me just focusing on typing sentences out and praying to God that it works out for the best. I call it trashy because compared to the rest of the work, which is planned, and thought out, these speedwriting sessions are more spray and pray

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Aurora

Sage
Well, trashy in the sense of me just focusing on typing sentences out and praying to God that it works out for the best. I call it trashy because compared to the rest of the work, which is planned, and thought out, these speedwriting sessions are more spray and pray

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Got it. Are you trying to make them not trashy, then? Are you trying to figure out how to improve the quality of what you're producing in those sessions? I'm trying to understand how to help...
 
Got it. Are you trying to make them not trashy, then? Are you trying to figure out how to improve the quality of what you're producing in those sessions? I'm trying to understand how to help...
Basically, I'm making them trashy in order to keep up my daily progress while I brainstorm a solution in my down time. This is why I lower my word count for trashy sessions. It's more of form of writing I can do in order to keep my mind in the story while I figure out a solution.

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Aurora

Sage
Basically, I'm making them trashy in order to keep up my daily progress while I brainstorm a solution in my down time. This is why I lower my word count for trashy sessions. It's more of form of writing I can do in order to keep my mind in the story while I figure out a solution.

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It sounds solid and personalized. I'm not really sure what else to add except good luck and that with time your skills will improve and you'll find the sessions will be less trashy. Meaning you won't have to throw out as much.
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
The way I get through difficult work is to try different variations until one works. This is especially true of any art that I make. I don't know how writers have the kind of confidence that they can "always make it better later". You can? Says who? I don't know that I'd be able to make it better later, and leaving that open question lingering would bug the hell out of me. The only exception to this is if I am working real late and I'm tired, often sleeping on it and refreshing the brain makes the work much easier the next day.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
It happens a lot--take a look at how many responses have appeared on this thread already. I really do think you have to get stuck like a hundred times or so, not so you no longer experience the pain but so you figure out what your way forward is. What works for you.

I will not pretend to know a solution. I still run into the wall. Lots of walls. Covered in bruises I am. But I think I'm seeing one common element: I'm not close enough to my characters in that moment. I may (or may not) have a pretty good feel for the character(s) at this point in the story, but I fall into the trap of moving them around like chess pieces. I'm outside, feet firmly planted in the plot, looking down at my characters. I need to be on the ground with them. I need to feel something.

So, for me, it's not so much about bulling my way through, or speedwriting my way past, but in slowing down, putting myself not merely in the scene but in the very moment. I know it's working not because I love the words--I'm too critical for that. I know it's working because I come out of the scene feeling something, whether it be joy or fear or surprise. The emotion doesn't matter; its presence means I've experienced something, which means more than likely the reader will too. And that brings a secondary emotion: satisfaction. That's usually enough to carry me forward into the next wall.

FWIW, an outline doesn't help at all here. I know where I'm going. I know how to get there. But I lose steam because I'm not enjoying the ride, and that's often because I'm hurrying. I'm not letting myself be in the moment.
 

summondice

Scribe
I realize I'm responding to something that's a few months old, but in case it's still useful or relevant to someone, and because I'm sitting in a doctor's office working toward my "five posts," my advice, in these circumstances, would be to "tell not show." It's the opposite of what we're all taught to do, but we're not talking about the final draft here. We're not even talking about a draft that's been beta read or been through a developmental edit stage - it's a first draft. Sometimes we don't know if X scene that feels really boring now is going to be needed later, but it feels like it is, and it's the next "step" in the story, so we write it.

Later, it's far easier to delete than to add, and if it turns out to be relevant then we can rework it to show over tell at that time. And we'll have more information to work with, too :)
 

Mythopoet

Auror
Take tedious scenes out. They should all be worth reading. If you find them tedious, so will your audience.

Not necessarily. There are many reasons a scene might be tedious to write. One reason could be that the scene is just boring and unnecessary and should be cut. Another reason could be that you know something needs to happen in the story but haven't yet figured out how it should happen. Or perhaps you have too many details you're trying to work in and it's bogging everything down. Or perhaps there's a character that you haven't gotten a good feel for yet and so writing their parts feels difficult or wrong. Or it could just be that a writer finds it very difficult to get their ideas down into words in the first draft. It's a mistake to assume that writing should always be fun and easy.
 
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