Forced Scenario Repost and Update

[ebergeise]

Yesterday afternoon, I posted a request about how to deal with a forced scenario. Thanks to everyone who responded and provided me with a number of good ideas

Early this morning, I posted a follow up that actually had a copy of part of a rough draft that I hadn’t meant to include. When I saw a delete option, I hit it. Problem was not only did I delete that post, I deleted the whole thread, along with all of the much appreciated comments/feedback.
I have reposted the original post. Unfortunately, I can’t repost any of the very informative comments I received.

Following this, I have posted a response to address several questions that readers of the original thread had.
Hopefully, I don’t screw it’s up this time. Please understand if the rough draft gets through, remember it is ROUGH!

I look forward to any additional thoughts and feedback that anyone can give me. Thanks in advance.

ORIGINAL POST

I’m having a problem with an idea that fits well with my story. I wanted to use a couple of sentences to describe it and move on.
The problem is that I’ve approached it from several different angles but it always feels forced. The only way that seems to work is go into great detail over several paragraphs with lots more information than I originally wanted to get into.
Any suggestions on how to keep it short and sweet and not have to go into lengthy detail?
I will admit the drawn out version seems to work. It just seems like I’m using a lot of unnecessary verbiage.

UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST

To answer usable001 and Voboy’s question, “It” involves mind manipulation, not true hypnosis. Short version I wanted to use, something to the effect - mind manipulation took place, it worked, move on to next part of story.

Regardless of how I’ve described it and turned it upside down, the short version always seems to feel disjointed. I’m just a little frustrated that I can’t make this version work.

If I explain the manipulation in detail, it works and is probably the way to go. Only problem - when explaining in detail, I have enough material to make a new and separate chapter.

The next chapter/scene involves the same type of mind manipulation. Outcome is the same but goes in a different direction. No detailed explanation is needed here and it works.

Rereading what I have written and the responses I’ve received, it seems that I will need to go the detailed route.

Several of the responses pointed out I might want to use a question/answer format. This is the conclusion I had already arrived at and would use this format if necessary.

I have a really rough, incomplete draft of what I am working on if I decide to go the “long” route. Just not sure if it’s appropriate to post the rough draft here.

I would still be interested in knowing how others have addressed a scene when you know something fits with your idea/narrative but than seems forced when you put it in. Like many of you, sometimes I do file an idea away to be used at another time/story. This one just seemed to be specific for this story.

If you made it this far, thanks for putting up with my ramblings. I appreciate anyone’s response to my question.

 

[Voboy]

Some of the best-known fantasy/supernatural works ever created deal with this sort of thing by simply not explaining it at all.

If you read Lord Of The Rings, you'll never get a sense of how Tolkien intended his magical world to work. He wrote of mind control, clairvoyance, telekinesis, energy manipulation, and something like hypnosis. He never went into detail, and his work is the richer for it: the readers fill in the blanks themselves. I've done something similar myself in SF/fantasy contexts: just hint at what the capabilities are and trust the reader to run with the ball.

If your piece is entertaining enough, nobody will care all that much about the details.

 

[ebergeise]

Thanks for this feedback for both this thread and the one you gave me in the original thread. My rough draft does not go into detail on how it works but does explain the results.
I’m not sure my characters(or me) know how it works. Just that it does.
The two characters that have this power have a wrapped sense of reality and lack a moral compass. I try not to go inside their brains too often!

 

[anthrodisiac]

I think I said before that the best approach you can do at the moment is just write it out, leave a note to yourself to worry about it later, and move on. It lets you brain mull this over in the background (or foreground), and by the time you finish your rough draft, you'll have a better sense of the overall story, the characters, and maybe have a better answer. Sometimes, things feel forced in the moment, but actually work really well in the overall structure of the narrative. Likewise, something that feels like it works in the moment can come across as forced or inconsistent upon editing. I personally find it's better to overwrite and then pare it back in editing than it is to start sparse and come in and write more after the fact.

This does seem like a scene where the results will need to be explained in at least some detail so the reader can understand them viscerally, assuming this is the first time the power is deployed. If it's not the first time, then you can move to "tell" instead of "show" since you already showed it once before. There's nothing wrong with telling, although the way the advice is given out by some people, you'd think it was a mortal sin.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm still not 100% sure I've worked out exactly what this thread is about, but I'm going to recomment a series of university lectures by the fantasy author Brandon Sanderson where he talks about magic systems and world-building. I can't remember which of the semester's lectures it was in (they're all useful to a greater or lesser extent) but he's quite good on how to get a complex fantasy (/sci-fi/horror) world going without just dumping information on your reader. I can't link to them directly at the moment, but search for the 2025 lecture series and his name and you should find a playlist.

 

[AG31]

When I saw a delete option, I hit it.

Wow! I didn't know that was possible. Can you be more detailed about the screen you were on?

 

[usable001]

I would still be interested in knowing how others have addressed a scene when you know something fits with your idea/narrative but than seems forced when you put it in.

When writing a rough draft, I'll add a comment inside square brackets next to the ugly/forced/clunky bit and move on—something like [the wording here needs work].

I use square brackets so rarely (i.e., never) that I can finish the rough draft of an entire novel, then run a computer search for a bracket to know what I definitely need to fix during the edit process. If I mentally let the matter go during my draft, the correct solution is sometimes easier when I come back to it after some time has passed.

 

[usable001]

I'm still not 100% sure I've worked out exactly what this thread is about,

The original post was about a few troublesome paragraphs while working on the rough draft of a specific story. However, the question then was essentially the same as the more general version in the OP, here:

I would still be interested in knowing how others have addressed a scene when you know something fits with your idea/narrative but than seems forced when you put it in.

 

[ebergeise]

Wow! I didn't know that was possible. Can you be more detailed about the screen you were on?

At the top of your message, there are three icons on the right side. Open the middle icon that looks like a piece of paper. The option to save or delete is at the bottom of this page.
I was lucky, found it while semi-panicking.