I cranked away at my second novel, and things were really flying. Over a couple of weeks, I was almost halfway done with the first draft. The image of the final scenes was clearly fixed in my mind. Then, everything came to a halt. Between that ending and where I stood was a massive chasm. My story had no way to get from the mid point to the end.
My hero is very well developed. There is a character arc. All of his growth and such area all laid out in great detail. In this particular story, the main character was never a problem. His destiny stood tall and demanded that I write the story in the first place. That story just required some bad guys to move it along. The details of that movement eluded me.
Fortunately, a storm arrived in my area, and I love storms. I made quick drive to one state park to watch lightning. On the way home, I took a forty mile detour involving a stop at another state park. There, I sat in a shelter and listened to the rain while scribbling in my notebook.
The drive gave me time to ponder my novel. It occurred to me that my bad guys were not well developed. I knew who they were on a superficial level, but I hadn’t created their world. Without that world, they had no motivation. That’s what was missing.
The scribbling defined the world from their point of view. It gave complexity and depth to them. More importantly, it gave them a good reason to go after my protagonist. Once I knew why they engaged in dastardly deeds, the deeds themselves lined up to happen. Those deeds built a bridge across my chasm.
There’s no way to know if the story will work. I still need to write the last half and all the appropriate revisions. There’s still the matter of not having an agent for the first novel yet. It was a good lesson for me that, if I’m not sure where my story is going, I may not understand part of that story’s world.