NaNoPanWe

[jetpack_monkey]

National Novel Panic Week. I'm 37,500 words in and can probably just knock the whole thing out over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, but I'm running into a problem...

I have no ending.

That's not true. I have an ending.

I have no climax. I've taken my characters to the logical location of the climax, but now they're just sort of there. They have things they need to do, but they're all really boring and I hate writing it, because I'm tired of writing filler. I've set up some elaborate plot devices that need to pay off and I'd rather just end the whole thing with a big explosion, but I can't write a big explosion for 12,500 words and it'd negate the coolness of much of what I've done.

To put it more succinctly, I'm at a point where I have to stop introducing new elements and work with the existing ones and it's boring.

Anybody else run into this trouble? How do you get through it?

Comments

[dhaunea.livejournal.com]

Last night I wrote up a list of what I needed to accomplish, in order of scenes, and forced myself through them - mainly because I won't have time to write now for days.

It still needs cleaning up and will need at least five or six rounds of editing (for content, mind - actual technical editing will come later)... but the story itself is finished so now I can go straight to finishing my Yuletide stuff.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I still need to start my Yuletide story, alas.

Most of my novel thus far has been completely off-the-cuff. I think I might have to outline what happens next, though, because my brain keeps on setting patterns and subplots in motion and the rest of my brain keeps connecting them.

[dhaunea.livejournal.com]

I stink at ending things. Always. This time, luckily, I began already knowing how I wanted it to end.

Sort of a slow, inevitable gathering of forces effect resulted. I like it.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I laid out my ending at the very beginning of the novel. Sort of a circular thing. I just am having trouble getting from where I am to where I am going. But I like your idea of just forcing myself through a number of necessary scenes.

[dhaunea.livejournal.com]

It gets the job done and you can always improve on it.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

The main writing advice I give is "Suddenly, demons attack!" Admittedly, this works best for Buffy fics and crossovers.

But the general idea of something quite unseen, unprepared for throwing all your characters up into the air, making them scramble to get their plans back on track, still works.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Who was it that said to kill somebody off whenever you hit a wall?