#WritingWonders 4.27 — What types of scenes are the easiest for you to write? Do you know why? CW: Wishy-washy logic.

No type of scene seems intrinsically easier to write than others. What makes a scene easier to write is how well I understand what I expect to happen and how well I understand what the characters are thinking, i.e., their agenda, before I begin writing. Sex scene, fight scene, heated argument, friendly dialogue: all basically the same. How long scenes take prepare for is proportional to their intricacy.

In the last novel I finished, one scene proved particularly painstaking. I discarded part or most of it five different times because I just didn't understand the woman who was the chapter antagonist, and kept getting her wrong.

The climactic scene that tied everything together also proved recalcitrant and turned into a slog (no rewrites, tho). It included the MC, twelve secondary characters with speaking parts and conflicting agendas, the main antagonist (Rainy Days if you've been following me), and an alien envoy who is part of an exchange of hostages while suing for peace. Three are a new type of post-human, one of which is one of the MC's lovers. The other lover is on the other side of the iron bars. Both lovers are realizing they could be buddies, which messes with the MC's mind at the wrong time. Additionally, there are a half-dozen non-speaking actors. It takes place in a high security prison that the MC has broken into because [spoilers].

I think I stalled out for the better part of a month before my intuition told me to go ahead and write it. That 8K scene took days to write.

An epilogue to the novel is largely unwritten because a key secondary character who's now the MC's friend wants a sequel written about her. She's campaigning to become a major antagonist and is heavily hinting she's sorta evil. The MC is oblivious, but any perceptive reader won't be and I don't want to set expectations. I'm not wanting to write that sequel at this point. This final 1K is proving difficult not because it isn't easy but because if I write it, it would feel like canon. In the meantime, #IAmRevising.

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