Q: What scenes are most difficult for you to write?

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Q: What scenes are most difficult for you to write?

Originally received via tumblr.

Answer:

My first immediate reaction was: Romantic scenes. I'm not sure what it is about romance, but it's something that I personally struggle with writing a lot. I don't think it's a technical issue - it's more of an emotional obstacle somewhere in there that I have to deal with. Every now and then I do end up having to have a romantic scene (like in Chapter 1 of The City of Light), but they're always easily the part of the story that I feel least confident about. I'm getting over it though! I'm currently exploring the different ways that I feel comfortable writing romance, and trying to find a process and portrayal that feels right for me.

On a technical level, though, I think the most challenging scenes for me tend to be high-paced scenes where lots of people are doing lots of different things in what should be a very compressed period of time. It needs to move quickly, but you also need to make sure you're letting the reader know who's doing what and what's happening, and sometimes that takes a little finagling until you get the right balance.

There's a pretty big battle scene that I have coming up in my fantasy series, where Sissa and Valgus go to war (spoiler alert? lol), and it was always meant to be a scene that finally connects all of the stories of all of the characters throughout the series; they all find themselves on that battlefield, one way or another, and each of them is involved in some way. It's chaotic, fast-paced, and also has so many characters and events happening that the balancing act is definitely a tricky one.

I'm currently looking to Riordan's Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series to help guide me, since he often has moments where multiple characters are in the same area doing different things. He tends to switch from POV to POV, but I kind of want to merge POVs in this one big battle scene to add to the chaotic element. Which, again, will be tricky - a very careful balance has to be struck so that the reader isn't overwhelmed.

Thank you for this lovely ask! I thoroughly enjoyed answering it.

If anyone wants to send me an ask, this is the game we're using.


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