I have been working on a scene that I just couldn’t make work. And I couldn’t leave it alone to come back to it later, even though there is plot after the scene that I have mapped out pretty well. It just bugged me so much that every time I left it behind to work on the next scene, I’d get antsy and need to go look at it again.
Last night, I finally cracked it. It was a tricky exposition scene in which I needed to introduce a few characters, and it didn’t make sense to introduce one, then move on to another in a later scene, repeat until they’re all there. It only really made sense for the narrator (I’m working in first person, which started out being awesome, and is now killing me, and I’m seriously wondering if it would make sense to rework the first two chapters into third person) to mention them all in the same scene. I finally managed to come up with a conversation that simultaneously introduced everyone the reader hadn’t met yet, gave some personality handles for each one, and came off as natural conversation.
WHEW.