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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29652
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29652
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It is hard to say without reading (and we don't do that here) but the times I have fallen into this paradox, and the many times I have seen others fall into it, I believe the real problem is that the story lacks a main spring. The main spring, the thing that drive a story, can, I think, be reasonably broken down to desire, frustration, and crisis.

A character has a desire. Various forces (internal or external) frustrate that desire. The character struggles against those forces. The struggle leads them to a moment of crisis (usually a crisis of values -- a hard choice), and from their to triumph, defeat, change, or self awareness. There are certainly yarns that don't obviously fit this model, that seem to get by on descriptive force and motion alone, but this seems to be the mainspring of most stories.

Without the mainspring to keep the author's imagination in check, the story can easily wander off course and end up tying itself in knots. This is, of course, highly discouraging. And while the advice to soldier on is no doubt well intentioned, and mere soldiering on may sometimes pay off in the spontaneous discovery of your story's mainspring, it may sometimes be better to pause and consult a map and make sure you have a clear idea of where you are going before you resume your journey.

Original score: 2