If At First You Don't Succeed, Try A New POV

There are days when the plan of execution on a story is just ON. POINT. The characters are saying and doing all the right things and the narrative flows from your brain onto the paper effortlessly. Then there are days when the idea of the story is stronger than the pages you've written.

If you're like me and have anger issues, your first impulse will be to delete, shred or set fire to everything in your path. But I implore you: resist the urge to chuck it all away!

Back in 1996 or so, I got an idea for a scene in an interrogation room featuring a seasoned detective and a young girl accused of murder. I wrote the scene long hand and really liked what I ended up with. The problem was this scene was clearly in the middle of a longer story that I hadn't fleshed out yet. Over the years I dabbled with this story, one false start after another, trying to lead up to that scene in the interrogation room to no avail.

I workshopped the story at school and with the ladies here at La Pluma y La Tinta, but it wasn't clicking. I was just about ready to quit the tale altogether. But then it hit me- I wasn't able to tell this story because it wasn't my story to tell. The young girl in question wanted center stage, to say what happened in her own words. It occurred to me after re-watching the film "Dolores Claiborne" and re-reading "Woodrow Wilson's Necktie" (from the short story collection, "Slowly, Slowly in the Wind," by Patricia Highsmith) that every criminal wants to tell of his crime. He want to be able to say, "I did that."

So I picked up the pen and let the child speak about the crime she committed. Now I'm three pages closer to my very first novel. HAZZAH!

On your writing journey, there will be days when you'll need to slide over and let the characters grab the wheel (come back next week and I'll tell you how). They'll take the story exactly where it needs to go, I promise you. Sometimes, all you need to make a good story great is a fresh perspective.

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse