I’ve been writing the second to last chapter of my book for a few days now. Everything was humming along quite nicely- I had the rough plot outlined in my head and a couple scenes that I’d been envisioning for months now. I plugged away, got those two pieces written, and then?
Everything stalled.
To backtrack for a second, my book is written in third-person, mostly due to the fact that I need an omniscient narrator. There are times when I need to leave Hatshepsut so the reader can see something else that is happening that she’s unaware of. That’s virtually impossible to accomplish with third person. So I’m mostly inside Hatshepsut’s head, but occasionally I have to jump to someone else.
The problem I’m having now is that I’m still in Hat’s head, but there’s an integral scene with her nephew/stepson (those royal ancient Egyptians did love to keep marriage in the family, you know) that is proving rather tricky. I can’t give away the details, but suffice to say this young man, Tutmose, is in a very awkward position. And the problem? I honestly don’t know how he would react.
I think what I might need to do is rewrite the scene from his perspective. I know how Hatshepsut would act, but looking at Tutmose from her eyes isn’t working. But before I do that, I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve.
Music!
I love writing to music. So I’m going for some angry music from my playlist- I think Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole might work nicely. And if that doesn’t get Tutmose in the mood, I’ll just have to dig into his head and rewrite the scene. I should probably do that anyway- it would at least prove a good character exercise!