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Keep Getting Stuck

April Swanson

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So, I've had a problem for the last year or so – I can't get anywhere past the 30k mark in a novel. Typically, I stick with something for three weeks or so, then I 'realise' that the story is wrong and I have to write something else. Quite often I'll go back to an old broken idea because I can't come up with anything new.

I have completed many novels so I know I can do this, but for whatever reason I seem to have broken myself. I don't know if these stories fail because they're simply not good enough, or if I'm letting the voice of doubt derail me.

Anyone experienced something similar and come out the other side?
 

Jason

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Having never completed a novel myself, I uniquely know what you mean - if you look at my rabbit holes of storylines, plots, novel, ideas and such just from my participation here, it sounds eerily similar.

Does that mean we're broken? No, I don't think so (at least I hope not). It just means the story in our heart isn't fully formed yet. When you write something that works, I think you just know it - kind of like a tuning fork that strikes inside you, that says "YES! This works!"

Don't give up hope - the tuning fork will ring for you eventually again, it's just not within your range of hearing yet! :)

That said, I've not come out the other side yet...
 

Katrina S. Forest

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I've been there.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing that freezes me up is thinking about how I might be able to sell this. Will I be able to sell this? Is this book "the one" or just another manuscript in the ever-growing pile of "close-but-not-quite"? I don't give the book the space it needs to just have problems, because it's a first draft and that's how first drafts go.

Sometimes the biggest thing that helps is jumping to a project I don't see as salable for whatever reason. So I can write it just for fun. Heck, sometimes fanfiction has pulled me out of the rut.

If you feel like the publication process is dragging you down, I'd encourage you to find a "fun" project, something that can pull your mind back to the joy of writing. And try your best to finish, even if you're seeing flaws on the way. There's something really encouraging and motivating about typing "The End" even when there's a chunk of the manuscript in the middle that says, "And then they have a big fight and Big Bad gets the MacGuffin and runs off."

Good luck!
 

April Swanson

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Jason: Thank you :) And yes, we are not broken! I've had magical ideas that have spawned books in a few months, so it definitely does happen. It's just agonising waiting for it to happen again!

Katrina: You're absolutely right. In fact, your post made me realise that I started to get blocked around the time I read Chris Fox's Write to Market... My earlier books were all over the place, genre-wise, so I tried to find a 'brand' and all that, and now...yeah, I think all that stuff is stuck in my head and playing silly buggers. Thank you so much for your wise words!
 

sempersomnium

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I did something similar to that. I wrote one novel and the start of another, eventually combining them into one large book and ever since then I haven't been able to actually finish anything. I don't know what my deal is.

I really hope that whatever kind of block or writing ordeal you're going through is short lived and you are able to overcome it and keep on going with your novels!
 

CaliforniaMelanie

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Hmmm. Is this a "thing"? Because 30K is about where I tend to hang it up too, for the reasons given (nobody will buy it, it's utter shite, the story no longer makes sense, etc.). And even now that I'm going great guns and have an outline and know where to go with my novel, I'm at a little over 30K and each time I type a few thousand words, I find I have to then delete the next few thousand that I had put in there previously as suggested scenes...so I'm staying about at the same place, endlessly.

I'm not giving up, I do know where I want the story to go, but it's kind of interesting that so many of us seem to be getting hung up at about the same point.
 

mwatchornbooks

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I felt the same way around 20k with my first MS. Have you guys checked out Susan Dennard's article about "cookie scenes"? She has a great system for reinvigorating your passion for a story. It takes some brainstorming, but I use it all the time when I get stuck and it's never failed me. It helps me remember why I wanted to write the novel in the first place. Hope it helps!
 

CaliforniaMelanie

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I felt the same way around 20k with my first MS. Have you guys checked out Susan Dennard's article about "cookie scenes"? She has a great system for reinvigorating your passion for a story. It takes some brainstorming, but I use it all the time when I get stuck and it's never failed me. It helps me remember why I wanted to write the novel in the first place. Hope it helps!

This was brilliant. Thank you!
 

maggiee19

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It reminds me of back in the day when I was 21 years old. I'd get to 20,000 words of a manuscript, completely abandon it, and start another one, and another one. It wasn't until I was 22, almost 23, that I completed a novel. That was 14 years ago. Now I can churn out a 140,000+ novel with no problem, when I'm not depressed. When I am, I just don't write at all.
 

AgathaChristieFan

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I felt the same way around 20k with my first MS. Have you guys checked out Susan Dennard's article about "cookie scenes"? She has a great system for reinvigorating your passion for a story. It takes some brainstorming, but I use it all the time when I get stuck and it's never failed me. It helps me remember why I wanted to write the novel in the first place. Hope it helps!

Thanks for sharing Ms. Dennard's article. It was very helpful :)
 

CalRazor

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I've been there.
Honestly, I think the biggest thing that freezes me up is thinking about how I might be able to sell this. Will I be able to sell this? Is this book "the one" or just another manuscript in the ever-growing pile of "close-but-not-quite"? I don't give the book the space it needs to just have problems, because it's a first draft and that's how first drafts go.

Yup, that's what looms over most of my projects. "Will I be able to sell this, or some version of it?" Some encouraging feedback definitely helps, but I actually wrote my first (and, uh, only) novel without letting anyone see it until the first draft was completed. I took about a month break after about the 50,000 mark because I couldn't think of the nice and dramatic final push. Then in the span of a couple days, I wrote final remaining chapters.

So, taking adequate breaks, as well as writing a book with a plot I was very invested in, really helped shove me across the finish line.
 
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April Swanson

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Thank you for all your responses (I'm a big fan of Susan Dennard's and love that cookie article :)). It's reassuring to know this is a common problem.

I now suspect a lot of it has to do with perfectionism. At the 25/30k mark, you're usually out of the exciting Act 1 and into the swampy middle, which is where the book veers horribly away from the awesome vision you have in your head. I think I've been tripping up because I've somehow forgotten how much editing and revision needs to go into a draft and that it's cool if that first draft is rough. There's so much pressure to produce quickly and to write something marketable. I've gotta get my eyes down and write, but it's so hard though to push all of that other stuff away. I can't pretend I don't want to publish and grow a small core of satisfied readers. Urgh. If only we had off switches in our brains.
 

L.C. Blackwell

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I now suspect a lot of it has to do with perfectionism. At the 25/30k mark, you're usually out of the exciting Act 1 and into the swampy middle, which is where the book veers horribly away from the awesome vision you have in your head.

Yes, and instead of greeting you with a wagging tail, :snoopy: your WIP now meets you like this.:troll

It's so hard though to push all of that other stuff away. I can't pretend I don't want to publish and grow a small core of satisfied readers. Urgh. If only we had off switches in our brains.

Girl, I hear you. So far, I'm finding that ninety percent of creating a coherent draft is getting past my own mental hangups. That, and there's a lot of stitching Frankenstein-wise before the characters start yelling, "I'm alive!" and even then, there's a while when things still look pretty rough.
 

April Swanson

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That, and there's a lot of stitching Frankenstein-wise before the characters start yelling, "I'm alive!" and even then, there's a while when things still look pretty rough.


YES! It takes me sooo long to get to know a character, so even after planning and writing chapters with them walking and talking, I still don't feel like I'm connecting. I know that it can often take an entire first draft for me to really understand a character, yet when I'm writing and they feel cold and distant, I spin into a panic.
 

L.C. Blackwell

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I know that it can often take an entire first draft for me to really understand a character, yet when I'm writing and they feel cold and distant, I spin into a panic.

Usually when I'm not getting a good response, or a good feeling of how they're working, it's because I haven't thought something through, or I'm oversimplifying their emotions. I know how I feel, but it's a huge amount of headwork to compute all the factors of experience and genetics and personality that make up a plausible picture of how someone else would logically feel.

Additionally--I don't know about you--but it takes me forever to dig up the kernel or nugget in the story that sets everything on fire. It's generally somewhere in backstory, but it's never obvious. I think it's probably the reward of hammering and hacking away, and moving a lot of junk first. It's like the brain supplies one more final "what if" and that's the one.

(And then you get to rewrite the whole thing over again, because NOW you know what you need. :fistpump)
 

mwatchornbooks

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Usually when I'm not getting a good response, or a good feeling of how they're working, it's because I haven't thought something through, or I'm oversimplifying their emotions. I know how I feel, but it's a huge amount of headwork to compute all the factors of experience and genetics and personality that make up a plausible picture of how someone else would logically feel.

Additionally--I don't know about you--but it takes me forever to dig up the kernel or nugget in the story that sets everything on fire. It's generally somewhere in backstory, but it's never obvious. I think it's probably the reward of hammering and hacking away, and moving a lot of junk first. It's like the brain supplies one more final "what if" and that's the one.

(And then you get to rewrite the whole thing over again, because NOW you know what you need. :fistpump)

Yes!! This is a big tell for me, too. One of my writing professors taught me my favorite writing trick to help me dig deeper into a character's emotions. It's more applicable to scene-level planning, but it helps me a lot. It's called creating an "emotion cluster."

Basically, my professor said that every emotional reaction a character has should be multifaceted. More than one emotion should be at play in any given scene. Let's use a common plot point as an example: Character death. Your MC's friend/parent/enemy/etc dies. Your character's emotion cluster is what can make a plot point as tired and overused as death feel fresh. Before I write a scene, I list at least three emotions my MC would feel. Let's say my MC's dad died. I use the circumstances to draw out the emotion. Does MC love her dad? Yes? Okay, grief is the most obvious. Did MC play a role in the death? Did she do something reckless that led to his death-causing decision? Guilt would be #2. We're still in trope territory, though. What about hatred? Could MC hate herself for not noticing he was hiding an illness that required expensive treatment so MC could afford to go to college? Could part of her hate the fact that he didn't give her a say in his decision? Can she hate that he worked himself to death to leave her with nothing but an empty house and no mortgage left to pay? That kind of hatred, for his secrets, for her failure to notice them, though not unheard of, aren't very commonly written about compared to the immediate and most obvious emotions. Long story short, layering emotions can, by default, make your work stand out. This is just me, but it helps me write faster, too. A lot can be discovered about character dynamics if you set the circumstances first and dig for the emotions and the justifications behind them after. Again, this is just what works for me, but hopefully that helps! :)
 

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Hello

I'm new here, but have to say this entire thread is a really useful read. I've never thought about actually labelling the complexity of emotions a character would feel as a bit of behind the scenes help.

Also the middle section swamp is a good description.
 

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30k is my point of doom. It's really common for me to write the first 25-30k really fast in an excited haze. It's the stage where I love my concept and everything is going well.

Usually I hit 30k, and then I need to take a break from the project for few weeks and work on something else while I work through plot holes and inconsistencies. I think 30k is about where the plot kicks up a notch, and it's the time when the issues in my planning get revealed. It can take me anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to work past this point. I like to work on two WIPs at the same time for this reason.
 

Yonathanasefaw

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Just keep trying, you'll get there. I've had my fair share of being stuck but i managed to write 60k words.
 

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I recently attended a writer's workshop put on by a well-respected YA author. One of her pieces of advice was that sometimes, the initial idea needs to sit while you think on it. The overall advice being an unrelated idea might affix itself to the initial one, and so on, and so on. Is it possible the idea might need more ideas attached to it?

That said, they say ("they" - I dunno who they are, but supposedly, "they" say it) the typical word count when a fresh novel dies is around the 25k-30k mark. If you can manage to get past that, maybe it's like when a runner hits a wall and you get your second wind?

And in closing, my other idea - if you have any scenes beyond the 30k in your mind, can you skip ahead and write those? Personally, I tend to write a bit out of order because my attention span is wicked short (like, dog from 'Up' short)... I'll be excited about Chapter 4, then get to a duller bit and really want to write a scene that'll be around Chapter 20, then switch down to about Chapter 7 or so for a different bit. Then I stitch it all together like Frankenstein's monster.

*shrug* It keeps me writing, at least. >.<
 

April Swanson

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I recently attended a writer's workshop put on by a well-respected YA author. One of her pieces of advice was that sometimes, the initial idea needs to sit while you think on it. The overall advice being an unrelated idea might affix itself to the initial one, and so on, and so on. Is it possible the idea might need more ideas attached to it?

That said, they say ("they" - I dunno who they are, but supposedly, "they" say it) the typical word count when a fresh novel dies is around the 25k-30k mark. If you can manage to get past that, maybe it's like when a runner hits a wall and you get your second wind?

And in closing, my other idea - if you have any scenes beyond the 30k in your mind, can you skip ahead and write those? Personally, I tend to write a bit out of order because my attention span is wicked short (like, dog from 'Up' short)... I'll be excited about Chapter 4, then get to a duller bit and really want to write a scene that'll be around Chapter 20, then switch down to about Chapter 7 or so for a different bit. Then I stitch it all together like Frankenstein's monster.

*shrug* It keeps me writing, at least. >.<

That author wasn't Maggie Stiefvater by chance?

Thanks for the advice. You're absolutely right -- it's that bloomin' 25k mark that's killer. I'm actually trying to do what you suggested and write further into the book, leaving holes behind me. It's not what I'm used to and stresses me out a bit, but, I'm hoping it'll all work out in the end.
 

April Swanson

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30k is my point of doom. It's really common for me to write the first 25-30k really fast in an excited haze. It's the stage where I love my concept and everything is going well.

Usually I hit 30k, and then I need to take a break from the project for few weeks and work on something else while I work through plot holes and inconsistencies. I think 30k is about where the plot kicks up a notch, and it's the time when the issues in my planning get revealed. It can take me anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to work past this point. I like to work on two WIPs at the same time for this reason.

Thanks for sharing. It's reassuring to hear others struggle with this but have found ways to work around it. I keep telling myself to work on two projects at once but have never quite managed it. Not sure why!

- - - Updated - - -

Just keep trying, you'll get there. I've had my fair share of being stuck but i managed to write 60k words.

Thank you :)