Sometimes I just sleep on it

By Greg Turnquist

Greg is a member of the Spring team, an author of several books on Spring Boot, conference speaker, and the lead for Spring Data JPA.

February 2, 2013

Courtesy of http://franckernewein.com/

As I previously wrote, I had just finished writing the climax scenes for Darklight. It was really exciting. I felt like I was hitting the high points. After doing that, I immediately jumped into writing the first resolution scene. I didn’t get far into the first paragraph, when I began to felt really blah with what I had written.

I backed up and tried some editing. I had two characters in it, so I tried swapping it to the other character’s point of view. That didn’t help. It just sucked. So, I did what I do best. I stopped there, and claimed victory in what I had accomplished so far. After all, I had just knocked out 2500 words.

Let me sleep on it

I saved all my work, updated progress stats in my beat sheet, then shut it all down. This afternoon, I found myself enjoying some quiet time with little duties. Guess what: my laptop started calling to me. So picked it up and got going. I had a teeny tiny idea lingering in the back of my mind. I wanted one of my characters in a reflective state of mind, looking over the events that would follow the climax of my story. Instead of writing every little detail, I instead wrote some short flashback scenes for the major pieces of what follows the climax. It gets the major points out and while providing a sense that things are complete, or about to be complete.

This part also lets me reach a high point in a crescendo for one of my characters that I have been slowly building. You see, each of my characters has a type of transition they undergo in my story. This is also somehow I gleaned from the Snowflake Method. Each character has a different way to grow, and this scene was a real visible display of one character I hope many of my readers will connect with.

What’s next?

I always enjoy books that set themselves up for sequels. That’s because some of my favorite books aren’t just one book. For example, I have read every one of The Foundation series. I read two of the Dune chronicles.

I personally have vague ideas for possible sequels (and even prequels) to Darklight. To do that, I need to gear up my characters for future excitement and adventure. Things aren’t simply “they lived happily every after.” All of this makes me excited.

Happy writing!

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