Raise your hand if you sometimes – or often – get stuck halfway through a story or novel, unsure how to bridge from the beginning or early middle to the great ending you have in mind. (Ed. – Raises hand.) In a post on Writers in the Storm, Shirley Jump offers advice for getting unstuck.
If your plot starts to wander or if you don’t know what your main character should do next, Jump says you probably have foundational problems. “The plot is the framework for your book, like the framework for a house,” she writes. “If you build it with cheap, flimsy materials, the house will fall down. If you build it with solid, strong beams and posts, atop a smooth, concrete foundation, the house will stand the test of time. Plots work exactly the same way.”
She suggests looking at the following elements:
- Does your protagonist have a goal that is big enough for a book and important enough to engage the reader?
- Does every scene have a goal and a sequel?
- Do things keep getting worse?
- Do the main characters act or watch?
- Are their actions properly motivated? ‘
- Does your protagonist have internal conflict?
- Does the past affect every scene?
- Is there enough conflict?
- Have you balanced narrative and dialogue?
- Did you dump the backstory or sprinkle it?
