After my last TWW meeting, we discussed what do we do when we get stuck in a particular scene or in the story line. I mentioned that I use dilemma dishes ala Barb - the TWW historian - and her mighty word-bowl. She writes poetry, as well as novels, and when she is stumped for a stanza, she digs a word out of her bowl and bam - she has the next line ending. I took this step a little further by combining it with my favorite, "Guy and the girl in the woods" author (sorry inside joke!), Jane Graves who had a nifty idea to put a list of 12 places on one side of the paper and on the other a list of 12 actions. Fold said paper in half and plug in the numbers from the other side randomly then open it up and you have an idea for a scene.

So my marriage of word-bowl and action list resulted in "Dilemma dishes". I took Jane's and Barb's lists and printed them up then divided them into two piles. Then I put them into two little glad containers and when I get stuck, I shake it up and pull a tab from each container. The last time I used this, the slips said, "by a clown" and "attacked". I wrote and entire chapter where the heroine is attacked by a man dressed up like a clown.

It worked - the scene is ... creepy and inforces why clowns are scary!

And after a rousing game of Clue with Spare over Christmas break (he won the first, I won the second), I thought you could do this with the game, too. Pick the three cards like you would for the game, then incorporate them into your story. Could be interesting - of course you may wanna change the names - people might look at you funny when Mrs Scarlet shows up out of nowhere in the story, with a knife in the Conservitory =)

I have the same trouble some times with character names. Now the H/H have to come to me organically and usually I cannot write until I have their names in place, but for minor characters, I use the phone book, old year books and relatives - I have exhausted every familial branch I can come up with in my geneology tree. The boys show up in five or six books with variations of their first and middle name - but never a main character. I cannot write a scene as descibed in the previous post or kill a character with my boys' names. (I used my friend SJ for one story and realized when I was almost through, I had used one of her sons - totally subconciously - as the Heroine's previous boyfriend. After a few drive heaves and massive shudders, I hit find/replace and changed it - all I can say is sorry and EW! As my excuse - I have never met the man and know a similarly named man through a friend of a friend, so the name didn't register until a scene where they were talking on the phone. . .)

I will say, though, for the "bad guy," if someone has pissed me off, they will be plugged into said role and usually do not have an easy time of it. Especially, if you REALLY pissed me off! Cosmic justice of sorts!

What ways do you overcome the plot plunkers?