The Open Heart Surgery Phase (Bite Sized Method)

Learning from experience is all about pattern recognition.

One pattern that I’ve identified while writing long form fiction is the idea that not all scenes are built equally.

Some can be cranked out within a few hours or so, and pretty much come out on the plate looking as they did in the pan. Other scenes take weeks and a good deal of slow, stress filled thinking just to get the basic idea down on the page and even then, they often require heavy reworks further down the line to get them somewhere close to rhythmic.

I’m convinced this second type of scene is the reason most aspiring novelists give up after a certain point.

The first time (well let’s be honest, the first dozen or so times) I encountered one of these “hard” scenes, I fell right into the trap.

I tried to rationalize my way around it.

“I’m just not switched on today.”

“Let me work on a different scene and come back to this.”

“I’m over thinking this, let me come back another day and approach it with fresh eyes.”

But none of the above helped because in these cases it wasn’t me that was the problem. It was the scene.

It doesn’t matter what type of story structure you’ve chosen, some scenes are inherently required to do more heavy lifting than others and are therefore harder to write.

This is mainly because the last thing you want to do is defer this heavy lifting to the reader. In fact if there’s any area of a plot where it’s important to focus on simplicity and cut out the smoke and mirrors, it’s this type of scene.

What’s the best approach then?

The first step is recognizing the animal you’re dealing with. If I’m looking down the barrel of a scene that's probably going to take me over a week to crack, I don’t want to enter it at a time when I’m going to be split for attention.

I want to tackle this breed of scene when I’ve got the space to mull over the micro-problems that it’s likely to feed you, make connections, cut out the obvious long ways around the issue; but equally I want to do all of this before the scene itself gets stale—so It’s important not to let it drag out too long.

The second step is being realistic. I don’t want to fool myself that it’s going to be anything but difficult. There will be hard work required for this type of scene. I will have to sit down and strain my mind a bit to work towards a solution. The biggest battle is accepting that, cutting out all evasiveness and preparing myself to engage with the work in this way.

I’m the furthest thing from a doctor, but I like to think of my approach to this type of scene as a kind of surgery.

You’ve got the scene lying there on the gurney, but you don’t want to make that first cut unless you can be sure you’ve got the time to finish the job properly. (yes I’m imagining a world here where your heart surgeon might need to pop out of the clinic for a minute to pick up some milk and bread. Humour me on this at least long enough to get my point out).

The moment you open that chest up, your scene is vulnerable to all kinds of bacteria—tangents, pacing dragging exposition—so you want to get the job done quickly and sow it back up as soon as you can.

You never know if your surgery is going to take until after its been sown up either, so I also recommend waiting a week or so after you’ve finished the scene before rereading it to check. This is the point where the fresh eyes are helpful.

And that’s really it. For me this is a key example of the Pareto principle at work, the 20% of effort that gets you 80% of the results. Rather than rush in all bullheaded and tackle one of these scenes at the wrong time—likely drawing it out for weeks; or waste time trying to make this scene into one of its free flowing, easy to write counterparts, the outsized benefits of noticing that I’ve got a scene like this on my hands, planning when and how I’m going to conduct that surgery will save you unimaginable amounts of time and mental strain, not to mention the superior scene that it will result in as well.

I hope this is helpful.