“Help! I Don’t Know Where My Story Is Going!”

AKA, “I’m Not a Planner…”

Unless you are someone who loves to plan every step of a story before you write a single word – with an outline, complete synopsis, or other tool – you’ve probably been caught in a dead end more than once.

(If you are that type of planner, I’m both in awe and a little frightened of you…)

As someone who early on wrote entirely organically, by the seat of my pants, someone we writers call a “pantser”, I ran into many dead ends that included dead-ending the story I was trying to write, until I learned how to blend planning and pantsing.

I’ve written about this before, a couple of times – here, and here – in a holistic way. This time I want to address a particular problem.

The Real Trouble Comes in the Middle

If you are a pantser, you know just where the trouble starts. You’ve got a fun concept. You’ve got a great hook. You love your main character, and adore your antagonist. You write a scene and then another scene and then suddenly…you’re blocked.

The sagging middle is where the trouble comes, because you’ve already spelled out the story problem (I hope.) This means you’ve developed your inciting incident, triggering the entrance into the realm of Act 2.

Here’s How to Handle the Middle

There are really only seven major plot points in any story, and if you can figure those out, you can make it through the middle. They are: the inciting incident; beginning of Act 2; midpoint; crisis; beginning of Act 3; climax; resolution. (Yes – Save The Cat, which I love, has many more plot turning points, but these are the Magnificent Seven.)

The problems start at the beginning of Act 2 and end at the beginning of Act 3 (clearly), so you’re down to needing to know what’s happening in those 2 scenes and the 2 scenes in between.

The 4 middle scenes each have a defining characteristic, and here they are:

1. At the beginning of Act 2, the main character first encounters the antagonistic force

2. At the midpoint, the main character knows that something must change or they’ll lose

3. At the crisis, the main character faces a dark moment and the prospect of failure.

4. At the beginning of Act 3, the main character sees a small light at the end of the tunnel.

More importantly, in each of the scenes that describe or define these turning points there are two things to keep in mind. First, that the main character must have agency/must act/must take charge for better or worse. Second, that the actions of the main character must impact everything that follows, i.e., there is cause and effect due to the actions of the main character.

For Every Pantser…

If you can flesh out those 4 critical scenes, even in a few sentences, you’ll be driving through the dark with headlights on instead of hitting that dead end that can kill a great story.

Use the charts here to help guide you. Always make the next scene follow as a result of what the main character has done previously to keep things in motion.

Keep Writing!

Yes, please keep writing. Remember: your stories have never been more important. Write from your heart, and the world will be a better place for your art.