bloodyrosemccoy | Writing Is Hard (Reply)

God dammit, I have done it again.

For the past few months I have been struggling with one Doctors! episode. It’s taken me way too long because, to tell the truth, it is not going well.

Something was not coming together. I kept typing, but all the way through each scene (except for a key few really cool ones), one very important point kept making itself clear:

This story is really boring.

It’s got some good bits, but a lot of it is just the characters sitting around going, “Now what?” And I just didn’t have any idea how to fix that.

But! I plodded on, slowly, writing each sentence and then giving up and then writing it again, boring myself with my writing, procrastinating like nobody's business. I think I was going on with the vague hope that once it was completed, it would somehow become awesome. There are always rewrites, after all. I can spice it up then.

Now, tonight, I just typed the last sentence.

And suddenly, like a thunderclap, I had a brilliant idea—a new direction to take the story that would actually make it interesting.*

Dammit, why didn’t I have this epiphany months ago? Now I’ve got to go back and do some massive rewrites, figure out how to put this new arc in, and work in the already-good bits around it. I just finished this story. What do you mean I have to go back and do it again?

I guess I can always hope that the added spice will make it more fun to write.

And on the plus side, I just recounted the story—both versions—to myself and realized that it seems to be my Let’s Casually Flip Off Conservatism story. If the finished product doesn’t bring down the wrath of James Dobson upon me, nothing will. That's something, at least.

*Or, possibly, just prove that I have watched way too much Law’n’Order.