Have been thinking about something a writer friend said a few days ago, re. a scene WF wrote. The scene reads great, smooth as butter, not a word wasted. What's interesting, though, is that it moves. It pulls you in and next thing you know you've already read four pages or whatever. I recalled seeing the same scene back when WF was still reworking it, and it didn't move, the way a WIP doesn't move while you're still in the middle of trying to fix it.

The reason this is interesting to me is that WF says the scene opened up and started moving when WF changed the setting. That was all, just put the characters in a different place. They were still doing and saying basically the same things, but the background became different. For some reason this allowed WF to progress and fix things and get them moving.

This has been niggling at me (mildly, because I'm effing BUSY) over the past couple of days. Somehow switching the setting jostled WF's mind, right? It sounds like not a big deal just hearing about it, but the more I think about it, it seems important. A very small change that took place mostly in the writer's head rather than on the page clarified and enlightened and opened the door to progress--perhaps substantial progress, because when you've got one scene that moves, you knows how it feels to get a grip on the story, so you know what to shoot for in other scenes.

It especially seems important to me because it may speak to some of the issues I'm having right now. I've got scenes where I know what happens, but they're just not quite right. I know how it feels to have a scene that's not quite as it should be, and then you suddenly see that scene in a slightly different light and rewrite accordingly and then it falls into place. It would be nice if that happened to me right now.

Because sometimes when you have one scene not quite right, everything that comes after it is therefore a tad off, too, and the problem multiples as the story goes on, till you come to a point where you can't work anymore and you don't know why.

If I understood this process better--if I understood more details about what makes a scene click versus not click--maybe I could make more progress, or give a jolt to my approach re. my own WIP. Will try to see if WF has any light to shed on the subject.