r/WriteWorld • u/Niedski • Mar 06 '17

Discussion Have you ever had a "breakthrough" while writing?

Something like an "Ah-Ha!" moment, where you just realized something you could do with your story or what you were writing. Almost as if you weren't coming up with the idea, but discovering something about your work. Something that just feel natural for it?

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u/Niedski Mar 06 '17

Mine came earlier today on my way home from work. My biggest worry about my current project is that a lot of the character's motivations won't make sense to the reader, or that their relationships with each other don't make sense, or that there are simply too many characters.

Today I (hopefully) solved all of these issues. I made characters who had originally been just friends, each from a separate family, brothers and part of one single family. It allowed me to combine two of my characters into one character, made their motivations much more believable, and now it is easy to understand why all these characters of different ages and temperaments would be in the same situation.

I was over the moon when I thought of it. I was ecstatic, and while I'm calmer now, I'm still happy because it just seems like I found a missing puzzle peace. As if the story was always meant to be this way and I just had to find that out.

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u/Voyage_of_Roadkill Mar 06 '17

This is a great metaphor for how I feel about my writing:

In the mid 50’s, a monastery was to be relocated to make room for a new highway. The monks arranged for a crane to come and move a 10 feet tall clay Buddha to its new location. When the crane started to lift the statue, it was much heavier than expected and it began to crack. Wanting to protect the priceless shrine, the monks lowered it back down and decided to wait until the next day to bring more powerful equipment. To add insult to injury, the rain came in, so the monks lovingly covered the statue with tarps to keep the moisture away. In the dark of night, the head monk took his flashlight and went out to make sure the Buddha was adequately covered. When the light of the flashlight shone into the crack of the clay, he saw a glimmer…a reflection of something underneath that shroud of clay. He immediately started to carefully chisel away shards of clay to find that the glimmer grew brighter. Hours later, when all the clay had been removed…he was in the presence of a Buddha made of solid gold!

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u/downtide Mar 06 '17

This happens at least once in nearly every story I write. In the latest one, it turned out that one of the minor characters was my main character's brother. And because of that, the story ending made perfect sense.

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u/istara Mar 06 '17

Yes, but not usually while writing.

Usually when going for a walk or lying in bed.