The Tuesday my outline saved me from a 4,000 word disaster

I was deep in a fantasy piece last month, about 3,000 words in, and the whole middle section felt dead. Every scene just had people walking and talking with no stakes. I usually hate outlines, thought they killed the spark, but I got desperate and sketched out where the next chapter needed to land. Turns out my problem was I had two plotlines that were fighting each other, and once I saw it on paper, I cut one and merged the other. That Tuesday afternoon I rewrote the whole middle in about 4 hours, which never happens for me. The next draft came out way tighter and my beta reader actually said 'this finally has a pulse.' Do you all outline mid-story when things stall, or do you push through and hope? I'm wondering if I should start doing it from page one.

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simonl1119d ago

I had that same panic after deleting a whole chapter at 2am and just watched a show instead, which somehow fixed my story too.