Writing Excuses 8.35: Digging Yourself Out Of Holes with Jeph Jacques

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Writing Excuses 8.35: Digging Yourself Out Of Holes with Jeph Jacques

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2013/09/01/writing-excuses-8-35-digging-yourself-out-of-holes-with-jeph-jacques/

Key points: The first step in getting out of a corner is admitting that you have a problem. Then take steps to get out of it. One approach is Oblique Strategies.  Change focus, use a different viewpoint, add someone else to the scenario. Throw it into the box, shake it up, and see what happens. Novelists and short story writers can go back and put the gun on the mantle. Often emotional fireworks precede recognizing you are in a corner. Make it a feature, hang a lantern on it! Sometimes, you can stretch the time between foreshadowing and use by inserting another thread. Keep your eye on the emotional beat you want from the scene. See if you have already done something useful.
( How many corners can one story have? )

[Brandon] We need a writing prompt for our wonderful listeners that... To jog them into doing something. I'm going to say go back to whatever you wrote most recently and come up with a different solution to whatever problem came up. You don't have to change your story. It's not like I want you to rewrite your story. But I want you to imagine, "Okay, I've got to solve this problem and I can't use the tool I used last time." Solve it in a different way, and write out that scene to see how it could change the emotional beat for what you've already pitched into the air. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.