My characters and I have been trapped up on the Seiser Alm for weeks now. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful place to be. I’ve enjoyed the research. But today, I decided that I had to break out. After studying pictures and video from the web–not to mention our old photo albums, I knew almost exactly where they were going. I knew most of what they were saying, but I just couldn’t smooth things out to the semi-polished rough draft that I usually like to have in my pocket before.
So how did I fight my habits? I inserted cliches. As writer Sharon Darrow noted in one of her lectures, they can be signposts to go deeper in a later draft. I also used my own personal signpost of “Transition Needed” in strategic sections instead of banging my head againt the keyboard in the struggle to come up with something with flow and fluid. Just after midnight, I took the Seiser Alm Bahn down to the valley station with my characters. I’m going to try to stay away. Plus, I think that this important scene will need some tweaking as I think more about the characters’ relationships.
Kristin Wolden Nitz 