Getting Unstuck When You Have No Idea What Happens Next

Every now and then, as writers, we hit a point where the story simply stops. Something has to happen next, nobody knows what it is, and the longer the cursor blinks the more you feel like you’ve lost the thread entirely.

Getting unstuck in moments like that is less about forcing a brilliant idea and more about getting out of your own way. Here’s how you do that:

Say It Out Loud

I know it sounds almost too simple, but when you don’t know how to fix something, name it. Say it plainly, even out loud: I don’t know how to fix this.

That small act of acknowledgment does something real. It lifts the problem out of the swirl of panic and sets it on the table where you can look at it. That’s the opposite of pretending the answer should already be there.

Hand It To Your Subconscious

Once the problem has a name, you can assign it. You basically just say to yourself: okay, brain, work on this for me while I go do something else.

There’s some science behind this, a pattern researchers described as quick start, slow finish. Researchers found that students who began a big assignment early enough to understand the task, then set it aside for weeks. When they finally sat down, the work was largely done in their heads. They just had to get it onto the page.

That’s worth putting some faith in. Once you’ve genuinely posed a question, the mind keeps turning it over without conscious supervision. You don’t need to white-knuckle the answer. Ask it clearly, then let it cook.

Write About It

Journaling is the next move. There’s something about writing a question out by hand that lets subconscious thoughts rise and wander. Once you’ve acknowledged the question and left it to your subconscious, bring it to the page (in your journal) about once a week to see what surfaces. The goal is simply to give it a place to breathe.

For breaking a problem wide open, there’s a trick the writer Janet Fitch taught me years ago. When you don’t know what a character should do next, or how to solve a plot problem, make a list of fifty things that could happen. Don’t quit at 20 or 30. Write down all 50 things.

The first several will be obvious and boring. The next few get a little interesting. Somewhere around twenty-eight or thirty they turn genuinely weird, the kind of weird where you find yourself writing, I don’t know, he does a cartwheel.

And then, somewhere around forty-seven or forty-eight, something kind of magical tends to happen. You have to push all the way through every one, but there’s almost always an idea in there that makes you sit up.

Getting Unstuck By Trusting What You Already Wrote

Here’s the most reassuring part. Very often, the answer is already in the manuscript.

Writers hit a wall, go digging, and discover something surprising. They quietly set up the solution chapters earlier, for no reason they understood at the time. The subconscious tends to lay breadcrumbs for itself.

That can happen on a larger scale too. A novel can take years to reveal what it’s actually about. When it finally does, the theme is usually already sprinkled all the way through the draft, scene after scene, waiting for you to punch it up rather than invent it from scratch. The subconscious often knows the heart of a story before its author does.

So the next time the cursor blinks and the panic rises, try the gentler path. Name the problem, hand it off, journal on it, list your fifty things, and then go look at what’s already on the page.

The way through is usually closer than it feels, and gripping harder isn’t what gets you there. What gets you there is trusting that the work continues even when you step away.