Revision Revelations

This morning I went to the local coffee shop before working at the used book store. I don't have a (working) laptop so I don't go to the coffee shop to write all the time, but I do like to go fairly often to work out plot snags with my trusty notebook.

Let's jump back in time to last August when I attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. I took a workshop on writing action scenes and the teacher said something really interesting. He said that we could apply everything we learned in the workshop about writing action/ violent scenes to love/ sex scenes.

Okay, flashing back to the present. I'm plotting out Chapter 4 still ( YES, still. The freelance project took precedence for a couple weeks among other things). This big thing about chapter 4 is that Maggie is struggling with memory loss. This is a pivotal moment in the story--when she chooses to fight for her memories.

And as I was strategizing I realized that although almost everything important to the scene occurs internally, this was actually an ACTION scene--a fight scene! Maggie is fighting against her better judgment as well as Fae magic in order to regain her memories.

This little revelation may not seem all that shocking, but I think it helped remind me that sometimes you need to think about a scene from a different perspective. And also that--and this is something very important to me and my stories, at least--an internal/ emotional conflict can and should be just as riveting and important as a physical conflict.

The opposite can also be true, of course: a character's inner struggle during a fight scene can take precedence over the physical danger, and at the very least will add depth and meaning and raise the stakes of the fight's outcome.