Dealing with Writing Challenges

I don't get writer's block anymore, which is not to say I don't encounter problems. God knows I do. I get frustrated at the usual tribulations that come with writing, but I don't consider them blocks. It's a matter of perspective really. Block sounds insurmountable, like a solid brick wall that you can't climb over or barge through. Instead, I get challenged.

I prefer challenge as a word because it is far more descriptive for the problems I face as a writer. Challenges are dares, ways to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, to think beyond what you know or think you know. When I'm faced with a writing dilemma, I don't consider it a problem I can't hope to solve, but a challenge to roll up my sleeves and figure it out.

When I started writing science fiction a few years ago, I entered a genre of fiction that was far outside my comfort zone, even though I've always enjoyed watching SF movies and TV shows. The Book of Dreams series is actually inspired by my love of shows like Star Trek, The X-Files, and Doctor Who. But writing SF was a whole new experience, with a language and a world-view that I had to learn and explore. Of all the challenges I’ve faced in writing SF, plot goes right up to the top of the list. Or rather, the verisimilitude to plotting cause and effect in a world where faster-than-light travel and interstellar planet-hopping are common tropes. Sometimes you roll with the implausibilities, but other times it presents a real challenge to create something that feels plausible to readers.

The second novel I worked on in my Book of Dreams series, The Menace of the Ro Kan Empire, was a real challenge for exactly that reason. With a multitude of plots and characters, I had trouble aligning everything together so that each action became an organic, sequential response to the next.

The biggest problem I faced had to do with a military spaceship and its crew. This crew had to escort a diplomatic corps from the Ro Kan Empire, a still active enemy of the Interplanetary Peace Alliance, the organization our hero, Agent Kira Wood, belongs to, as it traveled to a planet within allied territory to renegotiate terms of a peace treaty. Once the crew of the ship escorted the diplomats to the planet, they had to return to another part of the star system where they encountered a stand-off with a Ro Kannan armada outside a planet that was the center of the peace negotiations. Well, enough. Unfortunately, the actual protagonists of the novel, Kira and the Z'Dhia, were stuck on that planet and taken hostage by a different Ro Kannan armada that illegally invaded it, creating a problem that could potentially threaten peace between the two warring factions. So the story depended on a lot of verisimilitude to tie all these subplots together.

Convoluted, right? But each of these subplots had a purpose, ultimately leading to the overall theme of maintaining peace within a hostile world. But with all these different story threads, you can see how quickly they started to get tangled.

I have a pretty good intuition when something isn't working, and the choices I'd made were not adding up. I'd outlined the story and knew exactly where I wanted it to go, but now I had to redouble and figure out how to fix my problem.

It took me a week, but I came up with a solution. I decided to drop the idea of the diplomatic corps and reduced the negotiating party to one diplomat, a character who was already pivotal to the plot, then had him travel on a different ship to the alien planet. That allowed me to keep the military crew in the location they needed to be when the stand-off took place. Unfortunately this new idea meant I had to rewrite parts of the novel to reflect these changes.

That might sound frustrating, but you know what? I had a ball. I loved that I got to stretch my creative muscles, think past my assumptions, and learn how to solve problems. It's like working through a really difficult brain teaser and coming up with the answer.

Now that I've finished the novel, I can look back and realize that I made the best and wisest choice. The story has a better rhythm to it and feels inevitable. It would be great if I never had to grapple with these types of dilemmas at all, but then I wouldn't grow as a writer without them. Just as its true in life, the challenges we face help us grow.

Writing will always present you with challenges and every piece you work on, whether it be a short story, a novella, poem, or novel, can be a conundrum in itself. But with the right attitude, they don't have to be an insurmountable block that keeps you from writing. It can be a dare to be a tougher, smarter, and more resourceful writer.

This essay was originally published on my Substack newsletter The Portal. The first novel in my Book of Dreams series, The Book of Dreams, is now available on Amazon in print and ebook.