I had a conversation with a writer a few nights ago. He said that he actually thinks the best way to write is to not always be writing. His best ideas, he said, come when he’s in the shower or taking a walk with his wife. Totally true. Totally.

Writing is like plumbing. A pipe springs a leak, and you jump in to fix it. Or writing is like playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. A nagging problem in your plot pops up, and you rush to tamp it down.

You can pick any metaphor you like, but the point is, the story isn’t really done until you’ve dealt with all the implausibilities in your plot. That’s why stories are harder to write than simply relating the facts of real life. We’re creating a facsimile of real life. It’s got to be vivid, wonderful, and still connect with our understanding of real life.

You need time to think of ways to plug up those leaks, or how to pound the moles. Because a bad fix only creates more problems down the line.

I’m trying to talk about that in a post I did for SleuthSayers a while back in a post entitled:

Have Caulk Will Travel!

And yes, the caulk reference is a clue that you’ll be running smack into another metaphor. Here’s a snippet that nails what I’m trying to get at, and why it’s so important.

Alfred Hitchcock called them “icebox scenes.” Movie viewers stay riveted for 90+ minutes, dazzled by the story they’re watching. Only when they get home and start pulling cold chicken out of the icebox (Hitch’s imagery, not mine) do they realize that something about the storyline doesn’t quite make sense. When a producer pointed out the implausibilities in the script of the soon-to-be-shot Casablanca, the Hungarian-American director Michael Curtiz reportedly shrugged them off, saying, “I make it go so fast nobody notices.”

Plot holes are every writer’s bane. While I’d love to be the kind of writer who trusts that he can make the story zip along so fast nobody notices, the written word suffers from one fatal flaw that movies did not share until the invention of rewind and freeze frame. A reader can always choose to read slowly or reread a scene a second time.

I’m a person who frequently comes off as absent-minded. THIS IS WHY. At any given moment of the day, I’m thinking to myself:

How can I fix the story I’m working on?

What problem have I created for myself that is going to crop up down the line?

How can it make the characters, the story, the scenes better?

Sometimes the fixes just pop into your head when you’re doing something else.

Other times they come when you’re immersed in the writing, and they stun you. Because you never believed you had it in you.

I Have Become Story. The Creator of Worlds.

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Photo of cherry tree in bloom by me.