The danger of diving too deep into your story’s details, or soaring too high-up into your story plotting, is staying stuck at the same level for too long.

To write the best story possible you have to bounce around—jump up and down the levels, from the bird’s eye view of the entire story to the main columns (parts of acts, in conventional terms), to the individual scenes, to the littlest bits of the scenes—beats—and then back up again, high into the sky.

This takes practice. And patience. And planning. 

You can do it fluidly, as it comes to you, but therein lies another danger, of getting lost in this fluidity. It’s best to create a kind of a system for yourself where, say, if you write every day, then maybe every week you spend one day on thinking of your story overall. And maybe one day in two weeks you spend time thinking about Column 1 or Column 2 (in conventional terms, columns are parts of the acts, so it means you’d focus on Part 1 of Act 1, or Part 2 of Act 1, and so on).

However you bounce around, and up and down, and left and right, is up to you. The rhythm and the frequency is different for everyone, but if you neglect this, you might get mired in details and get blocked. Or you might get too deep into plotting twists and get blocked.

Writing is a balancing act. The best skill you can develop is the ability to do this bouncing, to see your story from the micro level to the macro level. Then you’ll spot holes before they appear, and choke sprawling dead-ends before they muddle your story.

Gif by Thoka Maer