“Pay attention to where you get stuck. That tells you where your craft needs improvement. Maybe you need help with plotting, pacing, or story structure. Those are skills you can learn, but the key is recognizing where the problem occurs.” – Craig Martelle

When I first read that, my instinctive reaction was to wince and mutter “Shots fired! Shots fired!”… My second was to nod ruefully, and sigh “It’s a fair cop, guv’ner.” After all, when I have a pile of WIPs that have seen no progress in so long that I call them WNIPs – Works Not In Progress – then clearly there’s a recurring problem I ought to track down and eliminate.

And perhaps, “What happens next?” is the wrong question, and “Where am I consistently getting stuck, and what skill do I need to improve?” is the right one to unlock what happens next.

One that’s bitten me a couple time is the transition from one world to another. I’ve done all my research and set up all my economy and motivations and social structures and (in one case, magic system)… and when it comes time for the crew to land on and do things on a different planet, or step through the gate to another realm, then brain locks solid because it hasn’t done all the worldbuilding for the new world and culture. Those two WNIPs are set aside for me to come back and do all the worldbuilding for the second world.

Another that’s bitten me when trying to write mysteries is that I discovery write, and while a lot of the clues come together, if I don’t know how it ends, I get lost in what clues to chase next and how… it just keeps getting more and more complicated. So, yes, I need to learn to plot… and I have that WNIP set aside until I’ve taken the time to sit down and binge on good mystery books, and read a few good books on writing mysteries.

A third – though this one I know and watch out for – is that depression is a symptom of inflammation, and when the health gets trashed, and my mood gets terrible, I can break a character without realizing it. And about 3K words later, the story grinds to a stumbling halt, because it doesn’t make sense to the back brain anymore.  Fixing that involves setting it aside, fixing my health, then coming back and cutting out the last chunk and picking up from there. (Done that several times, fixed it several times. Still have one WNIP on the back burner waiting for a structural overhaul and complete rewrite, because I trudged on through until the whole thing became grimdark, and I don’t want to write that.)

The current WIP isn’t stuck; it’s going slowly because I’m about to come up to combat, and I *always* slow down as my brain tries to set up all the parameters and figure out how I’m going to get through it. It’s a hard go for me, but I refuse to make it easier by turning to my in-house subject matter expert and dumping it in his lap… at least, not until I’ve given it my best shot. I’ll get there yet.

Where do you get stuck?