Graduate & Odyssey Online Instructor: “Problem-solving Your Story” by Gregory Ashe

Odyssey graduate and bestselling author Gregory Ashe will be teaching the Odyssey Online class Writer’s Toolkit: Taking Your Story from Idea to Manuscript this winter (application deadline: December 5, 2023). You can find more information on Odyssey Online’s 2024 class offerings at https://www.odysseyworkshop.org/odyssey-online/upcoming-classes/

Gregory is a longtime Midwesterner. He has lived in Chicago, Bloomington (IN), and Saint Louis, his current home. He primarily writes contemporary mysteries, with forays into romance, fantasy, and horror. Predominantly, his stories feature LGBTQ protagonists. When not reading and writing, he is an educator. For more information, visit his website: www.gregoryashe.com.

You’re doing it. You’re writing your story. Words are flowing. The muse is whispering. And then—

Bang.

Your wizard-detective hits a dead end in her investigation.

Your space pirate captain has no idea how to survive the asteroid belt.

Your lynx shifter comes up blank when it’s time to woo his fated mate.

The words dry up. The story stalls. The muse, conveniently, is nowhere to be found.

Unless you’ve been touched by the gods, no matter how thoroughly you outline, no matter how intuitive you are as a storyteller, you’ve probably experienced something like this. Often, all we need is time away from the keyboard, and our brains will solve the problem for us.

Sometimes, though, we need a little help. And one way to help yourself is to apply some problem-solving strategies to your storytelling.

What is problem-solving?

Well, it’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a system (or a set of processes) to help you find a solution. It’s not magic. It’s not even necessarily foolproof. But it’s a solid tool to have in your bag, especially if you don’t want to spend a month waiting for your subconscious to cough up an answer.

When I talk about this with other writers, sometimes I catch a look on their faces—shock, or disdain, maybe even disgust. I can practically hear what they’re thinking: Problem-solving sounds so mechanical, so uninspired, so unartistic. Maybe. It’s possible that it falls more on the craft side of writing. But my guess is that even the most literary writers have occasionally turned to the dark side for help. Colson Whitehead (winner of a National Book Award, two Pulitzers, and a MacArthur Fellowship), put it this way:

Writer’s block for me is a question I haven’t solved yet—Why is Martin doing this? What happens after they meet? What the hell is going on in this scene?

It’s a question I haven’t answered yet, but I trust that in 2 hours, 2 days, or 2 months I will eventually answer it. Maybe I have to keep writing and come back to that part of the story later. Maybe I have to do some more research. Maybe it’ll come to me in the shower. But eventually I’ll figure it out.

That sounds like problem-solving to me.

With that in mind, let’s dive into how you can use problem-solving in your own writing.

Step one: define the problem.

Perhaps the most important part of the whole process is defining your problem. The more specific and focused your problem is, the easier (in general) it will be to come up with a solution, and the better (in general) those solutions will be.

For example, it’s going to be hard to come up with a single, clear solution to “My fantasy novel sucks.” It’s much easier to come up with a solution to “My antagonist is too passive.” Or, even easier, “The wizard-detective needs to escape from this cell.”

If you feel like your problem is too big, start breaking it down—good books are built out of characters and problems, out of scenes, out of line-by-line text. Force yourself to be thoughtful and specific about what you’re trying to solve.

Step two: determine the cause of the problem.

Every problem has an underlying cause. Determining the cause (or causes) can help you figure out your next step.

Alex Hughes suggests that there are four types of problems:

1. You (the writer)
2. Characters
3. Plot
4. Process and/or time

You might be the problem. If you’re burned out, stressed, angry, tired—or if you don’t believe the story you’re telling—you might need to step back, recharge, and decide if there are changes to be made.

The characters might be the problem. I don’t mean this in a “my characters tell me what to do” way (although I suppose that might be a problem too). I mean this in a more technical sense. Maybe the problem is occurring because you want something to happen in a story that’s inconsistent with the characters (as you’ve written them so far). It could be a question of agency, personality, character arc, etc.

The plot might be the problem. Perhaps your subconscious knows (even if you don’t) that the scene you’re trying to write is wrong, somehow—either because it’s out of order, or because it conflicts with something that’s happened previously, or because it contains a plot hole.

Finally, the problem might simply be one of process and/or time. If you know that every time you get to the middle of a story, you freak out and find yourself wanting to abandon it, you might step back from the crisis and wait it out. Or you may discover that the problem has to do with your process (the most common example is that outliners tend to run into fewer dead ends than pantsers). Or it may simply be that you haven’t spent enough time thinking about the story and dwelling in it, and you need to slow down and let your subconscious catch up with your writing.

Step three: identify solutions.

The next step is to describe for yourself what a solution might look like. Another way to think about this is describing what the solution should accomplish.

In the case of the wizard-detective, you might simply jot down something like “She gets out without hurting anyone and without using her magic and retreats to her apartment.” Or, with our lynx shifter, you might write, “He finally manages to make a good impression after shifting.”

Writing something down gives your brain parameters and commits you to a specific type of solution. More importantly, it gives you a clear endpoint to aim for.

By knowing where we want to end up, we can work backward and ask more questions. How might the wizard-detective get out without using magic? What tools does she have available? How is the cell constructed? Or in the case of our lynx shifter, what qualities does the fated mate respond well to? Or what traits might showcase the lynx shifter in the best light? What could he do to show these traits? If the problem is arising because of the characters or the plot, now is the time to work backward and decide what needs to be changed.

Another technique here is to consider the elements you already have in play—characters, setting, situations—that might help you solve the problem. For example, the wizard-detective might have shown mercy to one of her captors—maybe, now, he returns the favor. Or the bad guys are closing in on the lynx shifter and his pack, and the first combat is a chance to show his fated mate his value.

Step four: implement the solution(s).

When you’re satisfied with your solution, it’s time to implement. Be prepared to hit a few rough patches when the rubber hits the road—you may need to workshop your solution a few more times if you discover, upon implementing it, that it doesn’t quite do what you need.

Final thoughts

Perhaps the most important part of problem-solving is mindset. Rather than seeing difficult moments in a story as roadblocks (which, I admit, is my natural tendency), it’s helpful to consider these moments as opportunities and gifts.

Like Colson Whitehead, John D. Brown argues that writer’s block is a signal to pause and ask questions. He calls writer’s block (those moments of writerly stupefaction) his “spidey sense”—an internal barometer for when something in the story isn’t working, even if we don’t know consciously what it is.

Steven Pressfield says it another way: “Resistance points you toward the thing you must move toward.”

And Marcus Aurelius has it thus: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way” (often paraphrased as “The obstacle is the way”).

George Saunders, though, puts it most memorably (and pardon the language):

I love that Gerald Stern quote: ‘If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking—then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.’ Or, as Einstein said it, in his slightly more snooty manner: ‘No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.’ So the trick is to keep the conscious, conceptual mind at bay and thus stay open to mystery, revelation etc.

The temptation, of course, is to lean too heavily on problem-solving techniques—to demand that our brain produce a solution, and now. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Many things—such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly—are done worst when we try hardest to do them.” The same might be said of writing—the harder we try to force our brain to come up with something, the worse we’re going to do. So, the next time you find yourself stuck, try problem-solving your story—just don’t try too hard.

If you’re willing to work hard, hear about the weaknesses in your writing, move outside your comfort zone, and try new techniques, then Odyssey Online is for you.

Application deadline 12/05

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