I have completed eleven novel-length stories and seven short stories, and I plan to self-publish the short stories in a collection. However, I have dozens of stories that I started but did not finish. Most of them were written in one session, and after that, I was never inspired to continue working on them. The stories have one thing in common, I hit a WALL and did not know where to go with the story from there. If there's a three act structure, I'd say most of these stories don't go past ACT ONE. I do the SET UP, but then I don't know how to start writing the MIDDLE PART. Does anyone else have this experience of reaching a WALL after completion of the SET UP?
Honestly, the wall is more of a rule than the exception. If you have 11 completed novels, having 40 uncompleted wouldn't be unusual at all. Some ideas just peter out after the setup... call it the setup to nowhere effect. If you have 11, you clearly know how to get a novel done, so I wouldn't sweat the ones that didn't make it.
Thank you, Homer, for your encouragement. When I reach the WALL, the question I confront is, "What happens next?" So often, I don't have an answer to this question and my writing STALLS. Perhaps what that means is I have a CONCEPT but not a STORY to go with it.
