When Your Plot Hits a Dead End
How would you say you manage to push forward a plot when it seems to hit a dead end or just lack ideas afterwards? I’ve been writing an outline and struggling what to do at a certain point in the story for several weeks now.
If you’re struggling with a small plot point, something in between other plot points, or are just having trouble strategizing, try these brainstorming tips.
If you have the first portion of the story, and can’t figure out the rest, then I have one word for you: Goals.Goals. Goals. Goals. Goals. Goals. Goals. Goals. Goals.
If you want to know where your story needs to go,
you first need to know what your protagonist wants.
If they don’t want anything yet, then give them something to want. Something they need to prevent, something they need to earn, something they need to save. Give them something difficult to accomplish.
Remember that all (genre) stories need to reach a final climactic moment in which your protagonist makes the choice to change as a person (or to stay the same) and finally achieves (or loses) the thing they wanted most.
Frodo brings the ring to Mount Doom.
Luke blows up the death star.
Harry Potter kills Voldemort.
The Beauty gets to be with her Beast.
Once you know where your story needs to go,
you can figure out how to get it there.*
Prior to these final climactic moments is the middle section of the book, made primarily of hurdles being thrown in your character’s way in order to…
(a) Block your protagonist from their goal.
(b) Make your protagonist learn and develop.
© Build up the tension until the final climactic moment.
These hurdles can be anything from finely woven subplots that tie everything together in a great plot twist at the end, to random junk you wanted to see your characters react to. Along with each hurdle, it’s important to make sure your characters get something out of it too, giving them a reason to believe they can reach their goal if they keep moving forward.
A not-at-all complete list of ways to create hurdles:
- Subplots. Make your protagonist deal with a subplot when they really want to be reaching for their goal instead.
- Take something away. Take away something your protagonist already has and either wants very badly to keep, or specifically needs to survive.
- Stepping stones. Provide a series of tasks your protagonist needs to get through in order to have the tools to accomplish their goal.
- Questing. Make your protagonist travel a long way to achieve their goal, thus giving them time to run into all sorts of nasty problems.
- Minor villains. Give your protagonist a distraction in the form of minor antagonistic characters.
- Major villains. Let the main antagonist rear it’s almighty head, whether this be a person or organization who wants to take down your protagonist, a natural disaster threatening their life or well being, a destructive part of your protagonist’s self, or something else entirely.
- Inconveniences and disadvantages. Remove or greatly hinder your protagonist’s ability to do the thing they were already planning to do.
- Redirection. Give your protagonist a brand new goal they now need to achieve, either instead of, or on top of, their old one.
You can create hurdles for your protagonist to overcome in any number of other ways. (Again, if you’re having writer’s block when trying to create these, check out the brainstorming tips. You can also learn more about creating strong plot points here.)
In the end though, the key is simply to have a protagonist who wants something and to make them overcome obstacles in order to reach it.
* If you’re already working on an outline, you’re probably the type of person who likes knowing the details ahead of time. But you don’t need to have all the details for this to work. Sometimes it’s enough just to know the protagonist needs to fight the antagonist, or save the city, or stop the love interest from leaving, even if you aren’t sure how they’ll do that yet.
Some random, related FAQ under the cut:
