Spinning My Wheels

I’ve been spinning my wheels on book 3 of Aristeia for the last two weeks.  I’ve gotten two thirds of it written but can’t move on to work on the last third until I figure out this one issue.  This usually happens at least once with each book. Something I have planned to happen doesn’t work. I work towards it and I have later material planned based on this particular thing happening. But when I get to the part where I write it, I realize it doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes its because the character has evolved differently than I anticipated so now wouldn’t do something I need them to do. Or I realize there’s no logical reason for this to happen, aside from enabling something later to happen. I hate that kind of thing in books and movies. It’s lazy.

Fortunately, I’m pretty sure once I figure out how to get past it, I can do so with minimal rewrites. In A Little Rebellion I ran into a major one of these roadblocks that necessitated scrapping the entire 60k words already written and beginning anew. This time, while the consequences of this event will affect how the final pieces of the story unfold, no matter how I resolve it, it shouldn’t necessitate changing but a few things already written, and only a few tweaks to the rest of the book.

It’s hard to let go of an idea, even when you know it won’t work. That’s the main roadblock. Once I accept that, I can start thinking about it anew without the baggage of trying to cram a square peg of an idea into a round hole of a plot.

This is why I don’t do detailed outlines. I know where the story is going but it also evolves as its written. The more concrete I make my plans for later material, the more times I run into these roadblocks.