Put Baby in the Corner

I'm about to suggest something that many folks will point to and say, "No! Bad advice, don't listen to her!"

In many ways, they'll be right, because this is something that not every writer is going to want to do. It's not even something every writer can do. But for some of us, it works really really well.

Writing yourself into a corner.

I do this all the time, because I like to get my characters into as much trouble as possible and I don't like to worry about how they'll get out of it. For me, this makes the story more unpredictable, because if I don't know how they're going to get out of it going in, how can the reader figure it out?

It keeps me very in the moment and close to the protag's head. I get to decide things as they would based on the information at hand, and I'm not unconsciously (or consciously) nudging them toward the solution the entire time. I've found that when I know exactly how my protag is going to get out of trouble when I start the scene, I let my bad guys slack off and only do what's needed to fit plot. The tension drops off because the bad guys aren't really trying.

But when I don't know, then I have this wonderful back and forth going on. My protag does X, so my bad guys have to counter with Y. Then my protag has to do A, which gets thwarted by B. Both sides keep trying to stop or evade the other, and they're doing everything they can to achieve that goal. My bad guys really are trying to stop them, not just go through the motions.

This does have its drawbacks, however. I've run into scenes where it took me several days (or longer) to figure out how to get my protag out of it. Sometimes that comes from studying the scene, but others I've had to go back and add a few things to help out my protag. If you're the kind of writer who gets frustrated with being stuck for days at a time, this might not be a good technique to try.

I've also run into scenes where there was no way I could figure out how to get them out of it and I've had to scrap the whole thing at start over. If you get frustrated trashing large chunks of your novel, not a technique for you.

But if you like a challenge of getting yourself into situations just as tough as your characters, and you can plot from both the good guy and the bad guy's perspective (important so you can make things get tougher and tougher), and you don't mind some scenes taking a long time to work themselves out, you might have fun writing yourself into a corner.

And if you're not sure which side you fall on? Try it and see how it works for you. If you start to get annoyed, stop and do it your way. While I'm all for trying new things, you should never feel forced to do something that makes you want to pull your hair out. There are a million ways to write and they all work just fine for lots of writers.

Don't be afraid to try new things, but also don't be afraid to say, "nah, not for me."