How I Managed to Save A Stalled Story
By: Ronn Hanley
Tags: Rescue Story, Storytelling, Writing, Stalled Story, Fix Story

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

My SF novel Hunter began life as 15 ‘seat of the pants’ chapters. I created a complete outline and knew my characters. I knew what the story was, where it was supposed to go and exactly how it ended.

And then I got to chapter 16 and everything fell apart. I tried for several weeks to restart the story but each attempt failed. I tried the trusty advice of letting the manuscript sit for more than a month but that didn’t help either.

Then I made a horrifying realization — I’d stalled because I had no idea what was supposed to happen next.

That was 10 years ago.

I have scrivener folders full of projects like that…

Recently I looked over Hunter with fresh eyes. I recognized that, despite the flaws, I have a start on a salable book.

The premise — alien invasion — is old hat. I added my own spin in an attempt to take the story in an original direction.

I believe the story is salvageable. It’ll take time and effort to fix but so what? That’s what writing costs.

Blowing 5 years of dust off of the manuscript was enlightening. At first I didn’t realize how long I’d let this story sit. But when I began my re-read I realized that its easy to allow years to slip by with an unfinished project. It was as disheartening as is was eye opening.

I decided that I was going to apply some of the new stuff I’ve learned my writing coaches to see if I could save this one.

Sitting down with a hand full of 3x5 cards and my favorite Mind Mapping program I turned the myself loose on the story.

The premise is simple and solid. After aliens invade earth a rag tag team of military types investigate the ruins of Seattle to see what the aliens are up to.

The humans are hilariously outgunned and desperate for answers. The aliens have devastated the world in a few short days but have never once communicated or even been seen. They just showed up and started wrecking shit.

As I reread through the story the problems became obvious.

Not only had I written myself into a corner, the story was boring. There were three main problems -

1. At 15 chapters in, nothing significant had happened. Sure some minor incidents occurred, but it wasn’t enough to pull the reader in and keep them reading.

2. The story wasn’t alive in my mind. I was writing it but it wasn’t moving me. If the story doesn’t have a pulse, it will show in print.

3. I’d picked the wrong protagonist. The story contained two protagonists, a powerful antagonist and a bunch of individuals all trying to do their own thing. There was no real ‘hero’ to root for or care about.

4. In my desire to write a ‘blockbuster’ I was doing too much. I tried to throw in everything including the kitchen sink right off the bat.

The story was muddy and had no direction.

A story like Hunter should be linear and simple:

Basically — Something horrible has happened. People have no choice but to respond. They discover things are much worse than they thought. Now they have to make dangerous choices without knowing if things will get better.

Linear yes, BUT written properly, not boring at all.

I don’t how it works for you, but my stories appear on a giant movie screen in my head. All I do is write what I’m seeing.

Hunter stalled when I made the story more difficult than necessary. The screen image in my head had more blank or missing moments than visible moments.

I was trying to do too much.

There’s a natural ebb and flow to the process. The story almost never pops out whole. Some of the dark screen moments occur because that part of the ‘movie’ hasn’t been ‘shot’ yet.

Nothing to show = blank image.

That’s normal because it takes time to develop what you’re trying to say.

What happened here was different. The blank moments existed because I wasn’t connecting with the story. It was too complex and my brain backed away from it.

If you’re having trouble with ‘imaging’ your story and getting onto paper I’d like to suggest slowing things down and making it less complex.

I use the analogy of the human body to help me think through the process. A body starts with the skeleton. Everything else, from placement of the organs to the operation of muscles and tendons is dependent on the skeleton to give it form and foundation. No skeleton = no body - or at least a form unrecognizable as human.

The basic through-line of your story is your skeleton.

The moment to moment of your story occurs within the skeleton framework. Without the framework you end up with what I had, a hot mess of people running around without a clue.

Create the skeleton in the simplest possible terms. You don’t need to know every single bone in the body to create your skeleton. Even if you know it’s called a femur (example — your character works at a job for some multinational company selling widgets to polar bears) call it a bone during your draft (your character has a job).

Later (after you get the entire story out) you can go back and explain that the bone is actually a femur, two inches around and 8 inches long with tendons and ligaments and marrow — get the idea? This is how I keep myself from bogging down on the details.

I overthink things. It’s how my brain is wired and I have to guard against getting carried away with adding too many details at the outset. Once that happens I vapor lock and stall.

It doesn’t matter what the first draft looks like, they’re usually hot garbage at first anyway. If you have to sit there and type ‘Wayne walked down the freaking driveway like he’d done thousands of times blah blah blah’ (And I MEAN adding the blah blah blah) just to get the words out of your head then please don’t hesitate to do so.

Don’t worry about the color of the driveway or what kind of car is sitting there or if its raining or if Wayne’s hair is on fire. At least not initially.

Starting a story from scratch or saving one that is worth saving is really that simple. Leave in all of the um’s and ahs and sections that aren’t even from this story until AFTER you get the rough draft out.

Don’t even let yourself stop because what you wrote doesn’t make sense. Worry about that later.

Every time I sit down to write I’m reminded of a line from a western I saw years ago. Robert Culp and Raquel Welch in Hannie Caulder.

After Raquel’s character is attacked and her husband murdered she hires Robert Culp to teach her how to shoot so she can get revenge. She’s VERY motivated and wants to do everything in fast.

As a way to slow her down and keep her on track he utters a line that has since become part of my soul — ‘First comes right, then comes fast.’

To me that line symbolized getting the story out of me and on paper (First comes right) and later I can fill in the blanks, add the blue sky and make it awesome (Then comes fast).

I hope that helps anyone who may be stuck somewhere in a story or considering tossing one to the side. Not ever story is worth the effort, but if you feel that you have a shot then why not?

Good luck!

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