Painting oneself into a corner

Painting oneself into a corner

In writing, writers sometimes find themselves boxed in by the plot, promises made early in the story, left turns our own characters dare throw in. There are any number of reasons. How do you know it’s a corner? You don’t know what to do to move on. Do you go back and rewrite everything? Do you hope the reader will suspend disbelief?

Let me give you a concrete example. It’s only page fifty and the hero and heroine are crazy for each other. The hero declares his love. Oh no, you have 200 or more pages in which to develop the story and give them the happily ever-after they deserve. What happened to all the road blocks? What happened to making things worse? Black moments, etc.

One solution, if the hero goes overboard verbally let the heroine put on the breaks. You’ll see this technique used by Hallmark all the time.

If you are not writing a romance and the protagonist has solved the plot problem too early, then let the antagonist put a bridge over the wet paint so the hero can escape and they can play their deadly game. This often happens in Bond movies. The machine is about to laser Bond in half when the antagonist leaves it to his idiot assistant (and all hell breaks loose).

I write this tiny inspiration today just to say there may be an easy way to move on and continue writing. So follow your instincts, have paint brush and work toward the corner.