Ow. Ever feel like your story is hitting back? I have. A little too much recently. I wanted to post this because maybe my experience will help you. I've been writing for a long time.
So when I slow down or lords forbid come to a halt. I don't panic. I know the ideas haven't left me forever. A lot of the times I slow down because I instinctively know I have to navigate something with particular care or that a scene needs the right elements to work. I give myself a time limit. A week tops.
If my muse hasn't worked it out after a week of being away from it. I go in. Often, this forced attempt sucks. Lot's of characters blah-blahing and flailing about. Push. I get something done so I don't feel stuck.
I'm confident I'm not stuck... but I must prove it. So, when I get in this kind of unsatisfied mire, I will stalk back and forth like a restless animal. I will open the document. Chonk out a paragraph or two, feel totally dissatisfied and then push off and do something else. I keep all the crap in the document. I just push it to the bottom.
Essentially just iterating over what's going on, trying different ways the characters might approach what I'm trying to do. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Is this helping the story? Will I use this later? I claw at these questions.
I will tighten the dialogue. Loosen the dialogue. Change the pacing. All of it to feel what seems true to the story. Recently I spent two months slogging through what (for me) is one day or outside three days of work. It was super sticky, I had backed my protagonist into a corner and I wanted HIM to solve his own damn problem, even though he was outmatched and injured and in a crowd...
There were things I didn't want to reveal. I needed him to step up and move forward. The way to do it just didn't want to come out. My wife and I had just watched a movie. I wasn't even thinking about the story. I sat down and wasn't really even in the mindset to write.
I opened the document. Here's what I looked at : They dodged around carousers, threading between staggering drunks and strings of pub prowlers. He assumed that the density of bodies made warping in too risky for their pursuers. Even if his compensator gave them a beacon to follow, it was dangerous for those kriar to just dive into a crowd. Some of the realmers in this congregation were powerful, an ultra unlimited class warrior like Bartough who disrespected Ralani would be a handful for those kriar. It would be better for them to come nose-to-nose with beta enforcer but that was hoping for too much.
They reached the square in front of the colosseum shaped Haven portal building. The structure sat a little higher than the buildings around it with a wall around the grounds. The causeway leading up to the door angled steeply enough that the middle was visible over the heads of the crowd. As he scanned first the crowd on the far side of the square and focused on the walkway, his heart clenched. "Dren," he muttered. Kharabelle straightened and looked where he did.
Her gaze fixed on the kayyar watching the people going in and out of the complex. Since he wasn't causing trouble, the mataya at the checkpoint were just watching him. "Dren is right," she said. "Now, what?" See the "Now, what?" ... That's something I do when I feel one of these "spells" coming on. That's not just the character wondering.
That's ME. Whatever the characters do- it has to be believable... something that's established in the story so far... it can't come out of nowhere. This night I didn't feel inspired. I didn't feel stuck either. I just said to myself F it, I'm going to type something even if it's rubbish. So, I thought about how Dae, our protagonist would analyze the situation so maybe both of us could put this to rest.
They'd already done the invisibility trick. It would be foolhardy to hope that they could try the same thing twice and get away with it. Even if Kharabelle managed to spin up a higher tier spell, he bet those Daergons were wearing spellweave courtesy of their Chyrith allies. Though his sister had only cast, in her words, a 'plebe' spell that fastcast psion barrage had been no jest. Any mundane human without training or conditioning would have died right up or expired from shock after getting hit that hard. The Kriar yelled a lot, but didn't take near the damage he should have.
This didn't make it better. I'd actually made it harder. Stupid me. I thought about changing it. I left it. I kept typing.
Kriar were tough, they had tough armor, and they regenerated. Short of a shaladen, physical attacks were essentially pointless. What did that leave them? "Sis, how are you at illusions?" "No great shakes," Kharabelle said. "Learned phantasms up to third tier." "Low energy cost though, right?" "I have enough mana for straight cast third tier illusion, but-- oh right, these guys are magic ignorant. So, what's your idea?" "Something plausible," he mused.
"You and I push out of the crowd onto the walkway, see him and stop, then turn and run away into the crowd." "What if he shoots?" He cringed. Right. "Don't have our doppelgangers get too far down the path. When he looks up, retreat, and turn to follow the perimeter wall. He shouldn't shoot blind. The illusion won't show up in their special artifices.
He'll assume it's stealth. We just need to lead him far enough away we can get across." Kharabelle nodded. "I can do it from here, but wouldn't it be better to be closer? We'll have to fight our way through the crowd." "Dren." He bit his lip. "There might be another of them stealthed. You're right though, the less distance we have to cover, the more chance of success.
Let's work our way around to the right." My characters are working through this with me, or I'm working through it with them... whatever. The idea of an illusion just kind of dings in my head. It won't work. But Dae and Kharabelle DON'T KNOW THAT. It's all they've got... so they need to go with it. I'll go with it.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out because I am LITERALLY making it up as I go. Dae kept to the outer edge of the walk, making sure that if the enemies were looking for them they wouldn't be easy to make out. Kharabelle held tight to his arm, body tensed, gaze darting right and left monitoring everything she could. He felt proud to have a sibling with courage and determination who didn't crumble when she was at a disadvantage. What if he was right about them sensing the compensators? How close did they need to be?
The only thing that made him doubt was they'd been within a couple paces and the interdictor led them away. Maybe they needed to be actively searching or using a device of some kind. It was a calculated risk. They reached the walk that paralleled the wall that surrounded the portal complex. The wall blocked their view of the kriar standing in the entry path. Climbing up to look was like asking to get his head shot off.
From this side, Kharabelle wouldn't know what the kayyar did or even if he saw the illusion. He glanced at his sister. She was staring at the wall and biting her lip. She recognized the problem too. As I am writing this passage, I'm feeling the paranoia and projecting it in. She recognized the problem too.
I know what's going to happen but I don't know how I'm going to fix it. I'm going to do it anyway because I need to push through this. They crept along the stone work bastion, two paces high and at least half a pace thick. Solid rock, not bricks, probably stone formed with magic. A kriar weapon could likely pierce it, but it would have to be an aimed shot not a glancing hit. Still ten paces from the gate.
Dae guessed the gap in the wall to be about four or five paces wide. The look-out was situated on the far side of the walkway, ten paces inside the perimeter. He and Kharabelle slowed. More than once, people passing by brushed up against them, causing them to jerk. His heart beat faster despite all his efforts to stay calm and alert. His sister's grip hurt from the pressure.
He gulped air, forcing measured breaths. Close now, less than a pace to where he could peek around the gate pillar. He held Kharabelle back, braced against the wall and eased forward to get a glimpse of the target. Edging, edging, getting a bigger view... wider. As his view of the area increased, a chill crept over him. Dread stabbed into his chest.
Where? Now, I've drawn this out a LOT. The nerves and the tension had to pay off. He edges to peek around the wall and ... the guy they are sneaking up on is not there. They've been watching them the whole time. I knew it as I typed it.
The kinda-sorta plan had to fail in a big way. He didn't look up, he just dived on Kharabelle. Rock exploded. People screamed. Bodies darted. Impacts on his back and side.
His perspective spun, black sky, cobbled street, revelers fleeing. The two of them landed on their backs looking toward the top of the wall from where the uniformed Daergon kayyar braced pointing a weapon at them. Unpredictable dodging kept the first shot from hitting. Dae stared at the unwavering tip of the weapon, knowing the next shot wouldn't miss... Boom. Done.
End of chapter. No, really. This kind of thing. That's cake. I'm not blocked now. The hero is right where the enemy wants him.
Curious, what comes after? Chapter 77 Ghost of a Chance Clutching his sister, empty of mana, heart pounding and lungs like spikes in his chest, Dae stared up at the kriar insurgent as the gold-skinned sentient's finger twitched to fire again. He had nothing, contingencies scrambled, off balance, no cover, no viable weapon. Fear for him, fear for Kharabelle, searing anger at being suckered into the trap. They intended to bait the enemy away, but it had been the enemy baiting them. Heart thumps at the speed of a blinking eye.
Not enough air. What to do. What? Noise. Chaos. Smoke.
Stench. Dae fixed on the kayyar's implacable dead black eyes, legs and arms steady, the weapon barrel poised in absolute stillness, the flickering illumination of torch and lantern light glinting off the metal. The outverser felt no doubt or hesitation, murder came easy for them. Helpless anger, frustration and a desire to live exploded behind Dae's eyes. He glared at the gold-skin hoping to at least curse him in the afterlife. He couldn't even lift a pebble with telekinesis.
Don't just freeze. Do-- Something! This kind of thing pulls me forward... When the situation is so packed, so unrelenting... this I can power through because now I have a mission. I want the reader to feel the panic and the desperation of the protagonist. Built up to this point ...
I blasted through 3 chapters in back to back. I just needed to keep pecking away leaving fewer and fewer ways out. In doing that, I charted a path forward. The takeaway here is sometimes you're not stuck, sometimes you're just conjuring a great idea. Never be afraid to type crap because within that stuff might be genius that leads you somewhere.