For a while in college I would spend my weekends scratch building a robot. I had a large bin of recyclables and broken toys that were great material for this. I’d usually start on Thursday night and then would spend all of Friday-Sunday finishing it. They were great weekend projects and a ton of fun to figure out.
But a specific routine would occur whenever I set out to work on one. The first thing that I’d do on Thursday night, the deciding factor on whether or not I’d be putting together a robot or finding something else to do, would be rooting through my materials and seeing if I could find a capable headpiece for the bot.
By capable I mean one that spoke to me. If I couldn’t find a good piece, then I knew I wouldn’t be able to put together a robot. It just wasn’t going to work.
I might spend a few hours on Thursday night looking, and when I found the right one I always knew it and the rest of the robot would fall into place. It was like that one piece set up all the others that followed it. All I had to do was find that leading piece.
There were a few occasions where I’d try to bullhead my way through without finding a good piece and the project would always fall to pieces. It wouldn’t work and I’d always shelve it as an unfinished.
I like to relate other processes that have worked for me creatively in the past to different mediums, and I wanted to see if I could relate this to writing.
In terms of a story, the headpiece is the climax. It’s what everything leads to and what the resolution relates to.
It’s the bank heist. The kiss. Finally enacting vengeance. The confrontation with the super villain. The big moment.
This might seem obvious to some, but to me it’s a bit of a revelation. My writing tends to get hung up, and realizing that I need to spend less time on the opening, or the catalyst, or the mood, or the genre… and that I should be spending time figuring out what things are leading towards is an eye-opener .