Dealing With Road Blocks

Dealing with road blocks

As a first time author of a serial killer fiction entitled “The Gathering”, I quickly learned that most, if not all my road blocks came in the middle portion of the book.  In most cases, an author finds a story idea that motivates him or her begin writing, they have an idea about the beginning and in many cases, a great ending in mind.  It is the middle, or “No man’s land” as I call it to be the most troublesome.  

My aim for writing my book was roughly 100,000 words.  Please note, you do not need to make your goal number of words by any means, it’s just to set a frame for the length of your book.  If it’s a good book at 85,000 or 115,000, it doesn’t matter.  

Now, assuming the exciting beginning and the thrilling ending take up 20,000 words each, you now have 40,000 words accounted for and require an additional 60,000 words in the middle.  This “No man’s land” can make or break your book.  If a reader loves the beginning of the book, falls asleep in the middle, they won’t make it to your exciting conclusion.   

You will need to successfully link up your beginning and your ending which to be honest, is the location of most road blocks.
  
Additional characters and twists in the story will need to be created.  I will briefly address characters and twists in the story for this blog because those were the areas of difficulty for me and where I feel I can help you (the new writer).

Character Creation

It was at one point in my travels through “No man’s land” where I needed an additional character and I felt completely out of ideas, maybe I’d been writing too long that day, I don’t know, but I was stumped for a name, character description and how he fit in the story.  To keep this blog mercifully short and to the point, I will just hit a couple key points.

As I was sitting in my chair searching my brain for a character name, I decided that the first person to enter my office (I was writing during my lunch ok, don’t judge me) that I’d take their first name, change it to another name beginning with the same letter and same amount of letters.  (i.e. Steve became Scott).  In short, make a game of it.  You can turn frustration to amusement that way.  

I had also decided that the character would have the opposite physical traits, mannerisms and personality of the person that entered my door.  Tall becomes short, an ass hole becomes charming, unsightly becomes handsome and so on.   

Twists In The Story

Having created my new character, a young man named Scott and the fact that he was far younger than the other characters in my book, I contemplated a logical reason he’d be in the story.  (I made him a pot washer in the tavern where the story took place.)  Now I had the character and his reason for being in this tavern.  He was now linked with a bunch of eccentric old killers, the story grew and “No man’s land” got smaller.  

There are many more road block issues that can come across your mind as you write, in short, I found it fun to make a game of character creation and many times it led directly to an additional twist or misdirection in my book. 

If you have any further questions on this matter, please feel free to ask by contacting me on my website HERE.
F.R. Rivers