Reading, The Cure for Writer’s Block

In analyzing my story structure recently, I realized I needed to add three chapters—two between the Midpoint and the Second Pinch Point (using Larry Brooks’ terminology) and one after the Second Plot Point.

At first glance, this was problematic because…what else did I have to say? My plot threads were already worked out. Multiple drafts have been written. Wouldn’t throwing in more words to spread things out just add unnecessary prose? 

Maybe, but I think there is something to this story structure so I had to go back to brainstorming and see what was missing in the current manuscript.

I determined that there were some character relationships that needed to go deeper. Ah ha! My extra chapters. But what were my characters going to DO in these extra chapters? And what was going to be the added or extended conflict?

*stares at Word document*

I’m writing a historical (with magical realism elements), and call me crazy, but I like to include real people and events as backdrop to the action. There was a rather obscure, real person I had already name-dropped and I wondered if I could find out more about her. She had only been mentioned in passing in several books and a handful of online sources (that all pretty much said the same thing!)

Could I find out enough about her to make her part of the scene-setting backdrop for this one chapter? Or should I even bother? This research is time-consuming when I could just make up someone like her and save myself a lot of time.

I hit all my favorite haunts (Google Books and E-bay.) And guess what? Bless her heart, but this woman wrote a book. For $5 including shipping it was mine.

As it turned out, she was more of an editor for this book, putting together a collection of essays and poems and songs of the time, but she did write one article which gives me her voice, and the book is littered with photographs of her work.

Was it worth it for me? Well, I haven’t written the chapter yet–and I’d like to make sure she was still alive in the year I need her to be–but I’m no longer stuck. Finding sources like these helps boost my confidence that I’m getting my history right, and provides me with authentic details I couldn’t have dreamed up on my own. I’d say that was worth it