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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24842
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24842
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Other answers assume that the problem you are having is inertia, and perhaps they are right. Perhaps you just need to start writing and keep writing.

But perhaps inertia is not the problem. Perhaps that problem is that what seems like a story in your head is not a story when you get it down on paper. One way to test this is to write down the key story elements and see if they are fully realized. By this I do not mean an outline. An outline is what happens. The key story elements are why things happen.

One possible formula for this is to write down the desires of each character:

- What is the main character's main desire. 
- What stands in the way of their achieving that desire?
- What are they willing to do to achieve that desire.
- How does the desire, or what they are willing to do to achieve it, change with each setback they encounter. 

Since most of the setback to the main character achieving their desire come from the actions of other characters, you then need to ask the same questions about every other character.

The things that other characters do which frustrate the main character's desire are the result of the secondary characters trying to achieve their desire and are based on what they are willing to do to achieve that desire, which may also change as a result of their own reversals.

When a story that feels coherent in your head falls apart on paper, it may well be because these complicated dynamics of character and desire are not worked out properly. Somehow the stories in our head seem to easily paper over the cracks in the story shape, but putting them down on paper reveals the gaps.

Writing comes from imagination filtered through discipline, and to get a story out of your head and onto a page you have to subject your imagination to an appropriate discipline. The kind of discipline that works for each writer is clearly different. But one of the effects of that discipline is often to reveal that you do not really have a story (yet).

Original score: 2