We’ve all heard that old idiom: “paint oneself into a corner.” The image conjured is of a person painting the floor and realizing that there’s no way to exit the room without stepping in paint. Essentially, you’re backed into a corner (interestingly enough, another popular idiom), unable to escape.
Granted, no one paints the floor these days. We use carpet, tile, or linoleum—all of which are perfectly fine to walk on immediately after laying. But bear with me here, the general concept is still relevant.
…particularly to us writers!
For us, it means creating plotlines and circumstances that our heroes/heroines cannot possibly overcome in a realistic or believable manner.
If you’re one of the diligent that creates a complete and thorough outline before typing the words “once upon a time”, you may not have ever run into this. In which case, please allow me to extend my most heartfelt congratulations—and sympathies.
Without a doubt, trial and error is what makes us grow as writers and artists. If you don’t allow yourself the opportunity to stray from your plot somewhat, you may be missing out on a really great tangent or angle you’d otherwise never explore.
Readers rely on us to provide the unexpected in our stories. Where some might send little Johnny to the candy store to buy a 0.05 candy bar, the writer would send little Johnny on crutches into a candy store run by four cannibalistic brothers in the dead of night in the middle of a power outage. Yes, we’re twisted at times.
But that’s what makes truly brilliant pieces stand out. The experimentation with our characters, putting them in unusual circumstances and settings, can really make projects ‘pop’!
The down side of that is that we can often find ourselves written into a corner--a place where “little Johnny” couldn’t possible escape without super powers, an act of God, or the like. For Fantasy and Science Fiction writers, this could actually work (though, it still needs to be believable in the context of the universe you’ve created for your reader.)
For the rest of us, not so much. We find ourselves throwing away countless hours of writing while we try and “unpaint” the story to a point where we can manage the outcome a bit better.
I found myself in one of those “oh crap” moments while writing “The Veil”. I was completely enthralled in the big battle at the end and just allowed the writing to take form on its own. As the confrontation progressed, I could taste the tension, the sense of urgency, the helplessness—and the writing reflected it beautifully! To this day, I go back and reread that chapter, and the words literally jump off the page and paint the scene with such detail and emotion!
But then I realized that in all my excitement at throwing everything I had at my hero, I’d gotten him into a situation where he couldn’t possibly hope to survive. With disappointment, my finger poised over the Delete key, mind racing wildly to come up with some way—any way to keep the pages I’d just churned out.
Luckily, there was a way out for my character that I hadn’t seen—one that actually helped tie up a loose end from earlier in the book. So, it actually worked out beautifully…that time.
I learned a lot from the experimentation with that scene. The spontaneity of it elicited an emotional response in me that helped strengthen the writing in a way that wasn’t present in chapters that rigidly stuck to the outline.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: outlines are great for keeping the general structure of your work straight, but a little spontaneity now and then might just give your project the fresh point of view you’ve been looking for and take you in directions you’d never dreamed.
What are your thoughts? Have you ever written yourself into a corner? How’d you get out of it? What do you do to try and keep yourself out of that situation? …or do you worry about it at all?
Chime in with your comments!
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