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What Scenes give you most trouble?

I've come to an awkward discovery in my writing recently.

Ironically, despite creating a world with a magic system that is used primarily in the context of fighting, it's come to my attention how difficult writing fight scenes is for me. It's one of those cases of something being easy to daydream about yet nigh impossible to execute.

So, being writers, it's only fitting that you guys also have scenes you struggle with. I'd be interested to learn what these might be for you. Basically, these would be scenes that make you pause twice as often in the process of writing.

Also, these aren't necessarily scenes you write poorly. Just scenes that are more difficult to get on paper.

I'll be looking forward to your answers!

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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Hmm, the specific: I would say info-dumpy debate scenes. Writing the scene in Rivendell where they debate what to do with the ring, this sort of thing drives me nuts. They tend to bore me reading them, and same goes for writing them, heh heh. These scenes are also prone to talking heads syndrome (which I hate) and fabricated tension to help move the scene. See this all the time in this sort of scene.

More common, I dislike writing "tell" transitions... not really a scene, necessarily, I guess. Could call it the time-jump sequel (prequel). I'm always second guessing where I'm coming in, what needs to be "told" and how I can "show" instead and bickering with myself and and and... I write best/easiest when in action and flow, so even if I write a bad fight scene, it comes out easy.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Whatever scene I'm working on currently. :p

For me, it's always about finding the right emotional struggle in the scene and finding the right way to advance that naturally without it feeling like I'm beating the reader over the head with a blunt object. So that can be any type of scene, fight scene, talky scene, comedy scene, etc.

Anytime I struggle, that's what I pause and think about. For me, it's all boring until I find that emotional "in".
 
Hard for me to explain what I mean, maybe...But my hardest scenes are "down time" scenes. If my character has some immediate concern–midst of a fight, heading toward a confrontation, having an argument or even running from these things hah–then I have less trouble writing the scenes. Any scene that has tension resulting from events and interactions is easier for me. But the in-between parts give me lots of trouble.

This happens more often at the beginning of a story when the character and milieu are being established, before the main plot has fully taken hold, but it can happen anywhere. Even sequels can be a problem when some new high point of tension isn't just around the corner or already dogging the character, because by nature I'm not much of a fan of using lots of navel-gazing. As the story progresses, however, this becomes less frequent.

A part of this problem for me: specifics, details. When there's lots of natural tension, the specifics and details are somewhat baked into the scene already. But the down time? Not so much. So I might know what is going to happen in the scene, broadly, but when I sit to write it I struggle to find the details that will make the scene feel organic, fluid.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
I don't really struggle with any kind of scene. What kills me is taking a break at the end of a scene. If I have to begin writing at the beginning of a scene, then I gotta prepare myself for hours of staring blankly at the screen. But if I'm already in the middle of a scene, then I can just dive right in and the words flow. They might not be the best words, but that's what editing's for, right?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
This sounds similar to what I was talking about (in part anyhow). Doesn't seem to be a good name for it, LOL.

Hard for me to explain what I mean, maybe...But my hardest scenes are "down time" scenes. If my character has some immediate concern—midst of a fight, heading toward a confrontation, having an argument or even running from these things hah—then I have less trouble writing the scenes. Any scene that has tension resulting from events and interactions is easier for me. But the in-between parts give me lots of trouble.

This happens more often at the beginning of a story when the character and milieu are being established, before the main plot has fully taken hold, but it can happen anywhere. Even sequels can be a problem when some new high point of tension isn't just around the corner or already dogging the character, because by nature I'm not much of a fan of using lots of navel-gazing. As the story progresses, however, this becomes less frequent.

A part of this problem for me: specifics, details. When there's lots of natural tension, the specifics and details are somewhat baked into the scene already. But the down time? Not so much. So I might know what is going to happen in the scene, broadly, but when I sit to write it I struggle to find the details that will make the scene feel organic, fluid.
 
I don't really struggle with any kind of scene. What kills me is taking a break at the end of a scene. If I have to begin writing at the beginning of a scene, then I gotta prepare myself for hours of staring blankly at the screen. But if I'm already in the middle of a scene, then I can just dive right in and the words flow. They might not be the best words, but that's what editing's for, right?
Funny. For me it's the exact opposite [emoji23]

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Gryphos

Auror
Transitions always give me some trouble, whether it's from one place to another or one time to another. Hell, even just something as seemingly benign as getting characters in a room to have a conversation is annoying. So often I end up just saying 'screw it' and do a hard cut and go in media res to the next scene.
 

Eric Hawke

Dreamer
I always end up with a bunch of info I have to include somewhere. Finding a natural place/scene for it can be tricky. If it gets very "talky talky", I try spicing the scene up with some movement (literal), something energetic going on in the background, even just an annoying stone in the MC's shoe is better than nothing. (Never actually used the stone in the shoe thing, but still.)

Speaking of writing fight scenes, what helped me out was having the fights essentially be about problem solving. I put the characters in several smaller conflicts/dilemmas during the fight. Having them come up with a solution to these problems is quite satisfying.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Fight scenes are not a problem for me. I don't usually enter one until well into the story, so the fight becomes a way to vindicate or exacerbate.

Where I struggle is with romance. I think I'm okay with the courting and flirting and caring, but when I try to write serious passion or sex, it feels staged, contrived. Perhaps that's my version of a fight scene--if you think about it, there are similarities. My current theory is that none of my stories so far have *started* as a romance. The love interest (actually it's only just the one sub-plot in one novel) is very much a secondary, even tertiary, plot item.

Besides that, I do not have trouble with description, but I do tend to give it short shrift in first drafts. I don't even notice it, most times, until I come back on a re-read. I try to school myself to treat descriptive passages as a way to set mood, foreshadow, or do similar such work. And I try to remember the maxim, so easily forgotten, to have the description reflect what my character notices more than what the camera sees.
 

Ruru

Troubadour
I'm a visual writer; by that I mean I see a movie in my head, and attempt to write it down on paper. This seems to make action scenes, fighting and the like, relatively easy to write, especially if I'm using well established characters.

Where my mental movie fails is dialogue, particularly during those 'downtime' scenes. I find it almost impossible to write a casual conversation that doesn't sound force. Especially humour. Perhaps I am not a funny person? That may not be helping me.
 

Noxius

Dreamer
My biggest problem too are dialogues, especially long dialogues that go on for quite some time and/or involve more than two people, like a council meeting or something along those lines. I always feel like my dialogues become too forced and unnatural in those scenarios. But I had this problem ever since I started writing, and I feel like it got a lot better.
 

Aurora

Sage
Has anyone added opening scenes to this list? Because that's a pain in the butt for me atm. I got so sick of rewriting my chapter 1s that I just rush through it and go back to edit it as the story progresses. Less rewrites.
 
The scenes that are the toughest for me are those where the characters have decided they want to do something different than what I have in the outline. Trying to get them under control can be a pain. Sometimes I feel that maybe what they want to do is better than what I have outlined, and so we go down that path, while I'm looking for some way to get them back on the outline. Sometimes I have to just say, no, we tried it your way, but it ain't working--and the entire scene gets axed. That always hurts, especially when the character goes around pouting about it all the next day.
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
Death and loss. A scene where we lose a relatively important character and how those who are left deal with it. I've killed off the main protagonist's lover a couple times and those scenes were the most difficult of any to get just right—or something close to right, even. I had to dig deeper into emotions and motivations than anywhere else, and try to say something 'meaningful' without it coming out totally trite and way too pat.
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
Romance scenes on the rare occasions I'm inclined to write them, are more style over substance. I don't like giving romance to my favourite characters either, they're too busy with things that actually matter. :showoff:
 
I noticed a lot of people mentioned dialogue and I feel that I'm actually pretty comfortable with it. I think perhaps it's because dialogue is the thing that grabs my attention on the page the most when I read so it's what I try to focus a lot on.

I think any kind of action happens in my writing, I'm worried that I'm doing it incorrectly. Mostly because of pacing. I have gotten better as of recently but any time the story gets to an exciting moment is when it's difficult, which is kind of terrible because stories are entirely made up of that stuff.
 
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