Advice: Fixing situations which don't really fit - (Deleted Scene) · 5:05am Nov 15th, 2018
So, I want to take a moment to talk about the delay on Chapter 7, section 3.
Basically, what's going on is, as I worked out the finer details of what I was about to write, I saw the flaws in it, the things that don't make sense. I don't like writing things where solutions the characters SHOULD think of aren't happening simply because it's easier to write, so I have to change the situation to be more reasonable to me. If your main character has the power to do things like open locks and disarm traps, then you can't just spring a mundane trap on them: there has to be a reason why they can't just get around it. If your villain has the ability to create servants from corpses and fossils, you shouldn't have a pit full of bones that they haven't bothered to raid. It's as simple as that.
This situation typically comes about from two causes: 1) the author didn't put enough detail in the outline and 2) the author changed something after writing the outline. Often, its a mix of the two. I wrote out this situation in a low amount of detail, not really thinking too hard about it, and when I did start filling it in, I was thinking of the interesting ideas going through my head and a few pertinent things I hadn't accounted for originally didn't get factored in.
In this situation... I don't really have much advice. You just have to rework whatever you've got to take it into account, and try not to do it again. You really should rework it though, rather than leaving it to lie, because readers will inevitably ask "why didn't they think of this?", and "because they didn't think of it at the time" doesn't work as well if it's obvious to even you as the writer. It also really helps if you keep fleshing things out in the next few scenes, just so you can plan against setting up a situation that has a problem.
Anyway, here's an example of a scene which I wrote out, then realized is going to need a major change, for reasons mentioned above...
The slick incline of the trap went down for two floors, dropping down a third into what had probably been a deeper pit, if not for the piles of ancient bones lying at the bottom.
The room was pitch black, but I could see Rarity and Applejack squirming atop the pile. They could only hear each other.
“Ugh... What is this stuff?”
“Rare, watch out, ah think somethin's stabbin’ me”
“Hang on, I'll... Get us a light.”
“You don't want to do that.” I warned.
“Meta? Did you fall down here too?”
“What's down here? What don't ya want us ta see?”
“I... I'm lighting my horn.”
“You really don't want to do that.”
“Consarn it, what are we lyin- ahh ahh...” Applejack's eyes widened as the light came in and she saw the empty eye sockets of a skull staring back at her. She jumped back, panicking, then let out a whinny of pain as a few ribs dug into her fur.
Rarity glabced over at her, then down at the bones she was sitting in. She shrieked, voice cracking into another whinny.
I rolled my eyes, reaching out with my magic, “I told you not to look...”
With etherial claws, I plucked them from the pile, bones clacking from the sudden change as I carried them to the small platform on the edge of the room. I set them gently on the stone tiles, touching down next to them.
There is a way to justify leaving it in, actually, if you portray the bones in question as cast-offs that were judged unfit for use in necromancy due to being too splintered or damaged. It really depends on the extent of the villain's power, and whether or not they can reshape bone matter to make use of any bone, no matter how fragmentary. If you give them a more limited form of necromancy where they have to be choosy about the bones, it stands to reason that some of them might not pass muster, and could be carelessly tossed in a pit for our poor heroines to fall on the jagged remains.
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It's Warcraft 3 Undead, which basically used whatever they could find, as far as I could ever tell...
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Oh... WC3? Well, in that case, yeah, they'd probably use every last bone in sight, haha. Also, if that's what they're contending with, they're damn lucky to have Meta on their side.
It's too bad, because I really like that scene!
Especially the "You don't want to do that", twice in a row.
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To be fair, I did it better with the tide-pool in Act 3 of The Mare in White...