This is why you don't want to write that scene.

Writer's block is caused by story laxatives. I promise this analogy won't get too gross.

I’ve taught hundreds of writing workshops, and I’ve seen the same issues arise over and over again. Regardless of the skill or experience level of the writer or the genre or any of that stuff, it always played out basically the same way:

Writer launches into a story. Writer is excited. Writer writes through the set up and the inciting incident and introduces all the main players and gets the conflict going and then…writer gets “blocked.” Writer comes to workshop looking sullen. Writer opens laptop and stares blankly at document. Writer knows what happens later in the story but ugh, getting there suddenly seems so tedious. Writer gives up.

There are a lot of reasons you might dread writing a scene. Maybe it’s an emotional scene in which you know you’re going to have to tap into your own personal experience. Maybe it’s a scene that’s extra challenging because it’s well outside your lived experience or expertise and you’re worried about getting it right.

But I’m talking about a different kind of dread. The kind where when you think about sitting down to write that scene you lose all enthusiasm and passion for your book. It’s not ugh, I don’t want to write this because it’s going to hurt, or I’m worried it won’t come out right. It’s...ugh, I just don’t want to write this. Period. But it HAS to be in my book.

Why, though?

When I see writing students get to that stage, it’s pretty easy to identify the cause of the problem. That scene is Metamucil.

This post is not sponsored by Metamucil or any other brand laxative.

Think of your book as a giant, multi-course feast. Some scenes are tasty little appetizers and side dishes. You might have a cheese board or a little charcuterie. Some scenes are part of the main course. Some scenes are dessert, and of course you’ve got wine, maybe even some cocktails. They all compliment each other beautifully. You’re feeding your reader all of this deliciousness but once the feasting has begun you’re also worried maybe they can’t handle it and that’s when you pass them the Metamucil. 

That’s this scene, the one you don’t want to write.

It’s not always a backstory/exposition scene…but it often is. It’s a scene that you think the reader needs in order to, um, work the story through. (I’ll end the analogy here.)

If I can really overgeneralize for a moment, I think if there’s one clear marker between amateur writer and master writer—and to be honest, I very frequently fall on the amateur side of this line—it’s the ability to trust your reader to infer. To not spell everything out for them. To not overexplain or overdescribe. To not force medicine down their throats.

For one reason or another, you think your reader NEEDS this scene in order to understand your protagonist, your plot, your world. But here’s the bottom line: if you are dreading writing it because it bores you, it will also bore your readers. They don’t want this scene. They didn’t ask for a laxative. They want another rosemary cracker with baked brie and fig jam. 

The Metamucil scene might be an emotional/introspective scene, or an action scene, or a reveal scene. But more often than not, the reason the writer is dreading writing it is not because of what happens in the scene, (if anything actually does happen in the scene), but what information is conveyed to the reader. Which is why more often than not it is a backstory or exposition-filled scene. What happens in the scene is kind of manufactured because from the writers point of view, they needed some way to work the information in and maybe they were trying to avoid the whole exposition thing so they wrapped it up in random action. Slipped the Metamucil into a pill pocket so maybe the reader wouldn’t notice he was taking it. 

They’ll notice, though. My dog has accepted medication coated in peanut butter and spit out a clean pill.

Okay, so how do you fix this? Well, you need to figure out what it is in the scene that the reader NEEDS, and come up with a delicious new dish and bake that information in. In The Magic Words, editor extraordinaire Cheryl Klein recommends you ask yourself the following questions when something feels off about a scene:

1. What changes in this scene? Might be a small change, might be a big change. But something changes, and that change pushes the plot forward. If nothing changes, well, that might be why you’re dreading it. You’re missing that forward motion.

2. What do we learn about the characters through this scene? How do they change? What is its emotional point? Maybe you know exactly how this affects your plot, but you haven’t figured out how it affects your characters. What emotions were they feeling when the scene started? What do you want them to feel when it ends? You might be dreading this scene because you haven’t figured out how your characters are going to react.

3. What do you want the reader to feel here? (Aside from happy to be free from constipation?) Do you want the reader to sympathize with the protagonist, or feel angry at them, or be worried about them? Consider how this scene ties in with the themes of your novel. Maybe the reason you’re dreading this scene is because you haven’t quite figured out what it is you’re trying to say thematically. 

4. What is being negotiated? If there’s more than one character in the scene, ask yourself what each of them wants? Are they different wants, or do they share the same want? What obstacles are in their way? Who gets what he wants, and who doesn’t? Is there a concession, a fight, a compromise? If the scene you’re dreading is a confrontational kind of scene, maybe the problem is that you haven’t quite figured out exactly what you want the outcome of that confrontation to be—not just for your protagonist, but for all characters involved. 

5. What’s the climax of the scene? Every scene has beats: setup, rising action, climax, fall. If you don’t know the climax, you don’t know what you’re building toward, and that might be why you’re dreading it. Or maybe the climax is in the wrong place, like it happened near the beginning of the scene, and now the rest of the scene feels pointless. Or maybe it’s in the right place, but it’s just buried in other stuff, like backstory, world-building details, exposition.

Tell me about the last scene that really “blocked” you. Did you work through it, scrap it, figure out a way to make it work?

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The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a new series called Ask the Editor, which publishes every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle

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