by Andrea Christenson, @andrea143
The church we are attending recently decided to pave their gravel covered parking lot. Years of dealing with mud and dust spurred them on, and when the city repaved the road in front of the church they decided it was finally time.
The lot the church sits on is smallish, and the parking lot reaches all the way up to the church building, skirting it on two sides. Some of the old dirt and gravel needed to be cleared away in preparation for the anticipated blacktop. As the workmen peeled off a few layers of topsoil they discovered something shocking.
The foundation of the church was crumbling away. (Cue all the metaphors.)
The parking lot wasn’t dependent on the foundation for support and the foundation didn’t need the parking lot to shore it up, but, obviously, they couldn’t pave the parking lot while the church building was caving in on itself. They paused one project and started another.
This past week as I was working on my current manuscript, I was struggling with a piece of the storyline that wasn’t coming together. It wasn’t something I’d plotted out very well, assuming I would be able to fix it as I went along.
This turned out to be a terrible decision.
I am not a plotter by nature, and this isn’t a treatise on plotting vs. pantsing, however, I did think the truth of what happened to my church is fitting. Sometimes when a storyline or a scene isn’t quite jiving, it might have nothing to do with the part you are working on. Perhaps it is time to peel back the layers and see if something is crumbling at the foundation.
In my case I looked back at my rough outline and discovered that I hadn’t really planned to have my hero and heroine in any significant scenes together early in the book—a huge problem when you’re writing a romance! Once I had fixed that issue, the scene I’d been working on came together in a much better way. Even though fixing the rough outline didn’t actually change much of the scene I was struggling with, having the pieces put together differently smoothed out the difficulties I had in making the scene work.
This works on a scene by scene basis too. When stuck with something that isn’t quite working, I like to take a minute to look at the foundation of the scene. What exactly needs to happen to move the story forward? What will deepen the stakes? Is there a problem somewhere else that needs to be fixed before moving forward?
Your turn. Do you need to focus on the parking lot or the foundation?
She’s not looking for love… Housekeeper-slash-entrepreneur Ella Bradley prides herself on being ready for anything. After all, with a father who died—and lied to her—and a stepmom and stepsister who despise her, she has no one else to depend on. But on the biggest night of her life, she’s unprepared to be trapped in an elevator with the man of her dreams.
He doesn’t mean to lie… Wealthy prince-to-a-fortune Adrian Vassos wants nothing more than to shed his reputation as a party boy and prove that he is a savvy businessman. Even, a gentleman. But when he’s trapped with a woman who knows his reputation but not his face, he gives into the temptation to be someone else—and lies.
When serendipity brings them together again—this time to work off community service—can their combined sentences spark a new ending? Maybe…if Adrian’s lies don’t find him out. Again.
Andrea Christenson lives in Minnesota with her husband and two daughters. When she is not busy homeschooling her girls, she loves to read anything she can get her hands on, bake bread, eat cheese, and watch Netflix—though not usually all at the same time. You can connect with Andrea on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and on her website www.AndreaChristenson.com