Completely stuck in a rut

My advice would be to just start writing. Let your characters do what they want. Sooner or later they will find some trouble or some trouble will find them.

NaNoWriMo.
What a novel idea!

Oh my god, this is totally me. My characters are wonderful and I am in love with them, but they aren't DOING anything. They completely wandered off my outline about 20k ago and I've kind of been flying by the seat of my pants ever since, and now they're just...gah. I've been in this position before, though, and my suggestion (haha, I so need to take my own advice *is procrastinating*) is as Joe Union said, just to keep writing. At one point I had no clue what to do so I just broke the fourth wall for a while and suddenly stuff happened and I got to 10k in a single day, so yeah. Might help if you take a brief break first, but above all else, WRITE, because otherwise when you come back to it tomorrow you'll have built up the block even more. Good luck!

When writing goes well, it's like two parts of your soul talking to each other.

I'm in the same boat. I mean, I have almost 15,000 words and I really, really do not want to give up. I'm just...blah. Bored. I think it's cause I planned out the whole story, and I THOUGHT that would help but now I think it messed me up. So I dunno, maybe I'll try taking these characters in a different direction.

If you're absolutely in love with your characters, and they aren't doing much of anything, you NEED to do what all authors in your position end up doing. Kill one of them. If you can't decide which, kill your favorite. I guarantee opportunities for the other characters to act will pop up after that. You may say to yourself "I can't kill X -- he/she is just so amazing, the story wouldn't be any good without him/her!" But a bland character who does interesting things is far better than an interesting character who accomplishes absolutely nothing.

This works. See: The Stand, among other stories.

2005-2007: FAILURE
2008: The Knights of Catlan
2009: The Way Forward

I can so relate - thus note the very low word count.

`Suzy

AHAHA! I swear, I'm going to perpetrate what you just said...

But I seriously can't kill my favorite... he's my narrator. Annnnd well, I hate stories which switch points of view. I can't even switch point of view on my Facebook Status without getting annoyed. :)

I know exactly what you mean. I am in the middle of trying to write a fast-paced story, and my entire main cast (minus the heroine, who is a Diviner) are all spell-casters. And vampires who could really use a deck of playing cards.

We are in the middle of a complete standstill, in a battle between some almost invincible enemies called black bloods, who have just cornered my caravan full of mages. Black bloods are supposed to have explosive magic, but thus far have only been firing laser beams. My caravan just built a barrier that the black bloods can't break through (one of their limitations is their magic can't harm plantlife, so the Sylvamancers just made a "green wall"). They have now broken out their version of smoke bombs, and it is all that I can do not to explain exactly where these bombs have come from. (Even if that means that I have to name that other country.)

Who cares? I'll just write it down. I'm going to have to edit this chapter backwards and forwards to make it worth anything, but I really want this thing to be over with already.

But if you can't kill any of your characters, why not just threaten them with death? Make one of them the target of a hit man or something. Kill a relative, like that beloved great-aunt that so-and-so talks about all the time. Give that hit man teleportation powers just like your MC, only he can control them, and he knows where they come from.

I read an article once where if you want to write a story with impact, you give yourself a villain who is just like your hero, and you twist it. (It doesn't quite fit my series, because my story is kind of like A Song of Ice and Fire, only without the constant head-jumping. Everyone just has their own story arc. But there are a lot of people, and they all have a different point of view.)

Good luck with your story. Now excuse me while I chase mine with a hammer.

By the way, you can find that article here: Creating a Villain Worthy of Your Hero

• 
• The Mage of Gates: Warning
• Part One: SEEKER Complete
  

I TOTALLY know how you feel. I was on a roll and then... BOOM. Hit a wall. I am currently describing my main character's Christmas shopping expedition. The plot has changed from "can he save the world?" to "can he get the presents gift-wrapped?!"

It. Is. Absolutely. Undeniably. AWFUL.

NaNo07- The Journey (27,000/50,000)
NaNo08- Relinquishing Command (100,000/50,000)
JulNo09- The Merry War (76,000)
JulNo09- The Unchosen (25,000)
NaNo09- BNGoF1&2 (?/150,000)

I feel very stuck at present, and dont really have a plot either, just a vague idea of some ways it'd be nice for the plots to intersect. ANd unlike most folks on this thead, i'm still as of this writing way below my word count.. if this continues, by tommorow, i'll have only written about half of what i 'need' to have written this far to make it to 50 thou.

but hey, this is my first nano, and im not really knowing what i'm doing anyway!

by the way, i dont know if it's 'done' here or not, but if someone wants to read the about 14 pages of what i've written and wants to give me some feedback, i'd be happy to hear it :)

(I have the first page or two in my excerpt on my page here just to give a sense of it)

-mike

I'm the same as you. I was completely stuck this morning. I had no idea where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do. I had three major plot points worked out but no idea on how to start them. Then I talked to the Story Leader of my RP group and they helped me work some things out, give me more inspiration and things to think about.

Try taking things out of order and writing up the important things, which is what I've taken to doing. Not only do you write what you want to and not forget about it, but it adds to your wordcount and can be put together later to make a novel. It helps, trust me.

http://cupcake_writer.livejournal.com

2009: Welcome to Hell. A novel about Gods in high school.
2010: Thermals (tentaitive title). Steampunk. High adventure/fantasy of an all-female crew of airship pirates.