Write to the Tension

There are times when we feel we must get something down, some important part of the story, or whatever is supposed to come next, or the missing section that covers a gap in time … but it doesn’t seem to come. Unless this elusive passage is so hard to write because it’s terribly important — the deep secret trauma that you’ve been avoiding (in which case you must write it!) — give yourself permission to leap over it. Skip it, and don’t bother going back for it later. Anything you write out of obligation will be hard wading for your reader as well.

Instead, write to where the tension is for you. Forget about what needs to be done to work on your character or what is supposed to come next. Jump in, anywhere at all, or rather, exactly where you want to, wherever that may be. Write the moment in the book you have been waiting to get to, the exciting part.

Then, try to make everything you write, writing to the tension. When it’s dull or obligatory, leap over it. You can work out the transitions in the revision. If you skip the boring stiff … you book will be miraculously turn out not to be boring.