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Spent 4 hours trying to fix a dialogue scene
I was working on a scene where two characters were just talking and it felt flat. I kept rewriting it for three days, thinking the issue was the words. Turns out the problem was that I had them sitting in a blank room. Once I added some background action and a ticking clock, the whole thing clicked in about 20 minutes. Anyone else get stuck on simple stuff for way too long?
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eric72316d ago
Isn't overthinking the setting just another way to avoid rewriting the dialogue?
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daniel_lane3017d ago
Wait, did you consider that maybe the characters themselves were the problem and not just the setting? I mean, I've been there too, rewriting dialogue for days only to realize the two people I had talking just didn't have a good reason to be in the same room. Like, if two characters are just sitting there chatting, the reader can feel that's forced. Once I swapped out one character with someone who actually had a hidden agenda, the whole scene came alive. The ticking clock helps too, yeah, but I think the underlying tension is where the real magic hides. Sometimes it's not about what they're saying, it's about what they're not saying and why.
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thomas_martinez13d ago
@daniel_lane30 so do you map out hidden agendas before you start writing or figure it out as you go?
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