Writing Bland or Brilliant Scenes... @ednahwalters, @yaednah_walters

First, I have a question.

80% of authors use fictitious town. 20% use real town or both. If you use fictitious towns in your story, is it in a fictitious state too and fictitious country/world? (This might work for some fantasies). Or do you decide where you want to have your town then research the place so you get the weather, vegetation and topographical features right. I mean, I can't decide to have a desert town in Oregon or a carpet of grass as far as the eyes can see in the Rocky Mountain region, which has huge mountains. How do you sketch your town?  Or am I overthinking this.

Second, I cheated yesterday and posted no progress report. Why, you may ask. I spent the whole day writing, writing and writing, had 13 beautifully crafted pages then made the mistake of reading what I'd just written (actually, it wasn't a mistake).

It was, to be blunt, bland...no tension...no sparks...no that special something that makes a reader want to continue reading. It was the big bang moment, the secret-revealing scene you are supposed to build up to, not dump in the middle of the book. Does that ever happen to you?

So what did I do. I renamed the chapter 9x and restarted this morning.

Should I add that toward my word count? I'd love to, but I decided not to. So today I made up for it.

To celebrate, I've decided to share 2 brilliantly written Sheldon scenes from my favorite comedy, The Big Bang Theory:

SCENE I

"Leonard is upstairs right now with my arch-enemy," says Sheldon .

"Your arch-enemy?" asks Penny.

"Yes, the Dr. Doom to my Mr. Fantastic, the Dr. Octopus to my Spider-Man, the Dr. Sivana to my Captain Marvel..." says Sheldon.

"Okay, I get it, I get it!" says Penny.

"You know, it's amazing how many supervillains have advanced degrees," says Sheldon.

SCENE II

"This is between you and me. You can't tell Leonard any of this," Pennys says.

 "You're asking me to keep a secret?" Sheldon asks

"Yeah," Penny says

"Well, I am sorry, but you would have had to have expressed that desire before revealing the secret, so that I could choose whether I wanted to accept the covenant of secret-keeping. You can't impose a secret on an ex-post-facto basis," Sheldon says.

"What?" Penny asks, looking confused.

"Secret-keeping is a complicated endeavor. One has to be concerned not only about what one says, but about facial expressions, autonomic reflexes. When I try to deceive, I myself have more nervous tics than a Lyme disease research facility," Sheldon pauses. "It's a joke. It relies on the homonymic relationship between "tick", the blood-sucking arachnid, and "tic", the involuntary muscular contraction. I made it up myself."

BAZINGA!!!