Writing Yourself Into a Corner

And Loose Plot Threads (Featuring: The Crystal Witch. Coming Soon(ish)!)

This is different from Writer's Block, though it often does cause Writer's Block. Writing yourself into a corner means you can't really get from Point A to Point B in the narrative. You've written yourself into a corner, but you don't want to chop out what you've done because it's required to happen later on into the story.

Right now I'm deep in the writing of The Crystal Witch, so I am currently dealing with plenty of these challenges myself. Note that I say challenges and not problems. Problems are things you need to fix in order for them to go away, a challenge is something you face in order to make yourself (and, as a writer, your story) better for it.

Because of the way I write (all over the place shotgunning narrative like a maniac and mostly making it up as I go rather than planning it all out with a cork board and string like logical, sane people) I end up with this a lot. As a result I have gotten pretty good a figuring them out without it feeling like a totally convenient deus ex machina.

In The Crystal Witch, Gareth (the main character) breaks his swords in battle because they're cheap practice blades. Later on I found myself scratching the top of my head because he's having to fight several times. Initially it creates tension: how in the world is a swordsman going to fight without a sword? This also creates the opportunity to show how smart he can be (by making do without a sword and using something else as a makeshift weapon). Eventually, however, it's going to become inconvenient, and he's going to need a sword. Problem is, how is he going to get one considering the circumstances he's in?

Another example:

I love action, but I also like a dose of realism. I like things to be gritty and maybe even a little depressing. When my hero gets into a fight there is blood, vomit, and a building burning down.

Thanks to Jim Butcher I am pretty much required to make something burn in each of my stories.

This battle wasn't easy and, as part of the "show don't tell" part of writing, I show it in his clothing. Problem was, after that, he had a long journey ahead of him that was in between places that would allow him a change of clothes. Now, I have written myself into a corner where he is forced to either continue wearing those clothes (which, with my "dose of realism" mentality, would begin to stink), or go naked.

Oops.

To solve this I had to take a tiny step backwards so that the building wasn't completely obliterated in the fire, just the part where the battle occurred. This left other parts of the building untouched and, thus, salvageable. Thus, a change of clothes!

Loose plot threads are a little like moments where you write yourself into a corner, but you don't realize it.

A big part of The Crystal Witch revolves around an academy where witch-hunters are trained. In one scene it's mentioned that one of the students, Drake, had a grandmother who was a witch, giving him strange abilities he uses to help hunt witches. In another scene it's mentioned that Gareth was nearly kicked out of the academy because he might have been the son of a witch.

So...is the academy pro-witch background or anti-witch background?

These two clashing scenes could have easily slipped right past me. Luckily they were close together and I wrote down a note to remind myself to fix it in the edit process (I don't edit when I'm in the writing process unless there's something horribly out of place). However, had they been on opposite ends of the story, I might not have even noticed them at all.

However, a fresh pair of eyes (ie: not yours) is more likely to catch it.

Sometimes, however, they don't. This leads you to publishing the story with a plot thread dangling.

Let's pick on Dusted, shall we?

After the scene at Walmart, when they are attacked by faeries, I originally just had them get away, leaving the faeries at the parking lot and getting home safely. This, however, left open the possibility for a "car driving down the road during a battle" scene, so I expanded upon it. This left me with the car being ruined, and that gets fixed as well. They repair the windows and remove the werewolf blood from the seat, which is then given to Crystal.

...Hey, did you guys ever notice when the werewolf blood gets mentioned again? Because I sure didn't, and I wrote the thing.

However, Dusted was meant to be read as a standalone story, with only the possibility of expanding upon it. Crystal does decide right then and there that she's going to throw it away, however...

...Did I mention one of the reason I like Jim Butcher's writing is because he has Checkhov's Guns that span entire books?

Yes, I wasn't planning in doing that originally (oops!), but causing a very minor, loose plot thread to dangle also gave me an "Ah hah!" moment for the future.

These are two examples that you get to learn as you go. You likely won't notice them when you first begin writing. As time goes on, however, you catch and correct them. As more time goes on you instead leave them alone for the most part, stroke your author's beard, and decide how you can make your mistake into something awesome.

Even female authors are required to have beards.