Stuck in the Muddy Middle

What To Do When You're Lost and Have No Idea Where Your Story's Going 🗺️

Well look at us! We’ve sailed past two full months of 2025 and we’re already well into March. I know many of you started new projects right around the New Year, which means a couple months worth of writing has put a lot of you past the 20K, 30K, 40K and beyond mark. Which means we’re solidly in the territory of the Muddy Middle, like our fellow author-passenger, who writes:

I am venting here about reaching the Muddy Middle. I’m the Queen of Chapter One. I absolutely love writing Chapter One. I love the First Act. The trouble is, I often get so lost in Act Two (as in where am I going? How do I get out of here?) that I often abandon the story.

I could wing it, along with the help of a brilliant editor.

Now I don’t know how to wing it!

I know, Stuck In the Mud, that ships technically aren’t built for navigating mud, but I think if we cast our net wide, we’ll catch a lot of good tips and tricks for getting through the sludge out the other side. Your post is so perfectly timed in my own writing right now as I’m smack dab in the middle of my manuscript. And boy howdy, have I ever found myself in moments where I don’t know where in Poseidon’s seas I’m going (can you tell I’m feeling especially nautical today?). Here’s what I do when I’m not sure where I’m going next:

I throw my keyboard into the (metaphorical) ocean and grab real deal paper. Then I do the ultimate longhand brainstorm. I write down all the options of what could happen from the point where I’m stuck and follow them along their logical trajectory (logical within the rules of your world and the personalities of your characters, not necessarily like, actual logic, because Neptune knows a lot of my characters do dumb things). I physically write down if this very next step happens, then this would happen, then this would happen, then this would happen and so on until each potential next step gets all the if-this-then-this following steps that I can think of. Occasionally these next steps get me all the way to the end of the novel, other times they get me just a tad further along in the manuscript but something in me is saying “This is the direction to follow!”, so I go with it and when I get to my starting point, it’s time for longhanding it again (huh, I’m not so sure I’m sold on the term longhanding, it sounds a little…iffy, but you know what I mean).

Sometimes this hand-written process gives me my answer after writing 3-5 next steps and their follow up steps. Sometimes it takes dozens and dozens of mapped out paths until I get answers. Most often, no one trajectory is what I end up going with, but an amalgamation of these trajectories and then I have to find a way to take the steps that occurred later on in one option and meld them with options that happened in the beginning of another. So I go back to the paper and longhand brainstorm some more until I can find the connections that link those disparate next steps together.

I don’t mean to imply that this is necessarily an easy process, or that I can bang out dozens in a day or two. Sometimes it takes weeks where I’m writing these out by hand, but ultimately it always works for me, no matter how long it takes. The key for me is that for some reason, this process absolutely does not work typing in the manuscript or in a fresh new Word doc. Something about mapping out options by hand (no matter how ridiculous they sound) is what gets me to having those Eureka! moments. Hopefully this can help for you too!

If it doesn’t, another thing that helps me is to put the pen down (thrown in the ocean along with my computer) and pick up a book instead. Getting lost in someone else’s world lets my brain relax and my subconscious often works out what’s tripping me up while I escape to other characters’ problems.

What about you, Ventorshipmates? How do you get yourselves out of the Muddy Middle? Let us know in the comments, or if you’d like to remain anonymous, email me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com and I’ll keep your name out of the mud slinging.

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If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️

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Just a reminder to all our author-passengers, the Ventorship is looking for traditionally published writers to be featured with their upcoming book release for The Vent, our series where authors answer four written questions about their publishing journey to be shared with the whole boat. Email me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: THE VENT to let me know you’re interested. You can find examples of The Vent here, here, and here!