Figuring It Out

I’m in this weird place where I’m trying to figure out if I just don’t know how to make my plot work or the plot needs to change because it doesn’t work.

Honestly, I’m certain its the former. It’s a little outside my wheelhouse, what I want to write for this story. I was going to say comfort zone but I enjoy these kinds of stories. So perhaps it’s comfort zone as a writer. More to the point, I’ve never written anything quite like this before.

Enemies to lovers is a trope that can go so very wrong. And I think it takes a certain amount of talent to not only write it, but to make it believable. I’m definitely at that point where I don’t think I have the kind of talent to pull it off. Perhaps that’s why it’s morphed a little in the plotting.

When I first conceived of this story, six or so months ago now, things were different in my head. The other guy was the narrator. Things were a little more hostile and took longer to resolve. But as I’m seeing the story now, I find myself with a different narrator and that has put a whole new perspective on things. But the problem I’m faced with is that I can’t get them over the first hurdle. The one that actually happens before the story itself begins. And then the one in the midpoint of the story? That hurdle seems impossible to surmount, because I want it to be believable and to make sense within the context of the story and characters. It can’t just be a flipping switch.

I know it’s me. I know that there’s some sort of block keeping me from figuring it out. I’m very conscious of not making it too easy, but neither do I want it to be so difficult that there’s no way to get them to the place they need to be.

These guys have chemistry. They are supposed to be together. They just got off on the very wrong foot, and things spiraled out of control before they could stop it. My job as a writer is to make you see all of that. To make you see what happened and what is keeping them apart.

I just have to figure out how.