Not the Most Productive of Days

Well yesterday wasn't as productive as I'd hoped.

I was hoping to finish off Chapter 12 of my novel, which incidentally has the working title of Bishop's Move, but I didn't. I did however, resolve a problem with that particular chapter. Yay!

I have two important conversations, along with a dogfight (the dogfight slipped it's way in unintentionally), and I felt the pacing was a bit up and down. What I had previously was battle, then a conversation - interrupted by a dogfight, followed by another conversation. Initially, I had the conversations in different order (in fact, I had just the one conversation), but I wanted a little banter, and some cat and mouse, in the first conversation, and it helped somewhat if the 2nd conversation took place first.

The first solution then, was to swap them chronologically, but this did not resolve the pacing issue. To resolve the pacing issue, I have initiated the two conversations simultaneously, with one of the conversations finishing quite early in the scene, and the dogfight, between the protagonist and antagonist, starting in the middle of the conversation.

This keeps the scene pretty hectic but with the sort of pace I am looking for, and then a nice chill-out sequel before things kick off again. Here's hoping this chapter will be finished in the next few days after work

Now, a question for the (few) readers that I have, what sort of problems have you faced with scenes, and how have you resolved them?

Please use the comments section.

Don’t be shy! :-)