I've been having trouble with the opening scene of my novel for several weeks now. I've known for ages that the problem is my main character's behaviour. Every time I attempted to write the scene she would just stand around and not do or say anything productive to move the story forward.
Tonight, I finally figured out the source of this problem. I've recently made a lot of changes to the character, particularly her backstory. I knew that this would result in some major personality changes, which is what I wanted, but all in all she would still be the same 'person', if you will.
That's what I thought, anyway. Turns out I've been trying to write this scene with two conflicting ideas - one being the idea of what the character must be, and the other being what the character actually is. So I ditched all ideas about how the scene was "supposed" to play out and gave my character back her free reign.
This might sound strange, especially to non-writers - how does the author give the character free reign, you ask? Surely you're always in control of the character - after all, they're fictional! They don't have real brains!
Of course they don't. When I talk about my characters like that, I mean I've let go of the boundaries in my head. I've dropped ideas such as "the scene MUST start like this" or "she HAS to do that before this happens". I went back to old drafts, rereading scenes where my character was present. I searched for her voice again - the voice that I had lost during the changes. I reminded myself how she acted, thought, and reacted, and then I went head-first into the new draft. I wrote without thinking about what had to happen, and simply let my character do what she does. And voila! 900 words!
Letting the characters be themselves and do what they want works wonders for the word-count.
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