Every writer has one.
That one scene in your book, play, or script you keep putting off. Maybe it’s emotionally intense. Maybe it requires research. Maybe it’s just plain intimidating because it matters to the plot, to the character, to you.
This week, I finally tackled a scene I’d been avoiding for months. It wasn’t perfect, but once it was on the page, it unlocked so much more than I expected. The characters came alive in a new way. The stakes felt sharper. And I remembered that avoidance is often just fear of getting it wrong.
So I want to hear from you:
What scene have you been avoiding, and why?
Is it a big emotional payoff? A confrontation? A moment that feels too close to home?
How do you push through those moments and get the words down?
Let’s swap strategies, encouragement, and maybe even a few breakthroughs.
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Congratulations on tackling the scene, Ashley Renee Smith! I just did this yesterday. I put off writing a scene because I ran into a plot hole, and it would've taken too long to figure out the plot hole right then (I needed to do research too), so I worked on other scenes in the script. I figured out the plot hole today.
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Thank you so much, Maurice Vaughan! And huge kudos to you as well for pushing through and finding your way past that plot hole, that’s such a satisfying feeling. I love that you kept the momentum going by working on other scenes in the meantime. That kind of flexibility is such a key part of the process. Here’s to more breakthroughs ahead for both of us!
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Congrats!
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You're welcome, Ashley Renee Smith. Thanks. You're right. It's such a satisfying feeling. Sometimes it's just about looking at plot holes from a different angle.
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Like @Maurice I’d a plot hole to figure out. Mine was for a Detective Vintage Noir with 2 parallel ongoing cases. My brain began to fry in a seemingly unapproachable puzzle if I was to get the end I wanted to a major scene. I feared the page cos the angst was like walking in glue. An act of God to coin a phrase or co incidentals used as a turning point are a big fat no. Then I took time out to explore what would have been simple ordinary daily occurrences in characters lives, no intense research but thinking out of the box. Out walking the puzzle yielded without the prior intense foreboding. Visceral realism in the small things provided believable reason for someone to physically move location for time needed to trigger next plot point. Moving away from the work & fresh eyes approach after a good nights sleep shifts the paradigm.
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Haha! So true. Mine is a scene where the characters actually need to talk and say the words that are at the heart of the whole film. My solution is to put replacement dialogue and then each time I read it, edit it sloghtly as ideas occur to me. I left that scene till last to write!
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Mine is actually a scene that came to me suddenly—and of course, it happened when I had no way to write it down. I loved it so much just “watching” it. But every time I sat down to actually write it, I hesitated. I was like—no… not that… not yet. So I've been avoiding it for a while :)