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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9445
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9445
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

You know it's a critical scene, and you're scared to screw it up. That's reasonable. The problem is that you're so scared of screwing it up that you can't even let yourself start, because you're afraid of "breaking it."

Rationally, of course, you know that you can edit, rewrite, or start over. But the fear of the blank page can be crushing.

So you find ways around it. Some suggestions:

- **Sit down with a good friend and a recording device. _Tell_ your friend about the scene, in minute detail.** Explain what you want to do. Tell the friend who is in the scene, what they're doing, what your goals are as the author. Share some dialogue. Totally riff. Don't be afraid to say things out of context or jump back and forth in the storyline. Have a conversation. The next day, play back the recording and transcribe as much as you can. That will give you something on the page which you can then edit and flesh out.
- **Write a detailed outline, or detailed notes.** Don't worry about the wording. In fact, make it choppy on purpose, so you are deliberately NOT worried about how it sounds. Just do a dump of everything you want to accomplish in that scene, and then you can rearrange the bits. Again, this gives you something on the page.
- **Write it backwards.** Seriously. Why not? Start from the last line and put things before it. Takes some of the pressure off because you've already gotten to the end part.

The point is that you cannot edit a blank page. You need to get something underway.

Original score: 4