I write this in advance, but by the time you read this, November should be over, and with it NaNoWriMo, which drove up the number of writers and their laptops in cafes for four weeks. It would be interesting to see if NaNo made a difference in global coffee consumption.

Some of you might be exhilarated by the experience. Or traumatised. Or both. Welcome. This is what writing can feel like. Congrats to all winners and condolences to the non-winner. Maybe try again in April, when Camp NaNoWriMo starts.

One of the main reasons, in my experience, why books stall out halfway through is trouble in the plot department. You bash along happily, intrigued by or maybe even in love with your characters and the beginning. You’re making good progress—thousands of words on what we call the “setup” –establishing who your characters are and where/when they live. That’s the first five or ten minutes of the average 90-minute Hollywood movie. And we’re enjoying it because it’s all new and shiny and, wow, this writing thing is easier than thought and then . . .

. . . we hit the “out of ideas” point.

Or as I like to call it, the Wall. Our people are happy people and if it’s a romance, they’ve met the other person and there’s attraction and it’s mutual and things are easy and they could just fall into bed and fuck, and the sex will be AMAZING, and tomorrow they’ll declare their love to each other and start picking out curtains while doing research on adoption agencies.

And our 90-minute movie will be about 20 minutes long.

At which point the Executive Producer will fire us.

(In reality, readers will tell you how much they hate “instalove” and that the book was “boring”).

Ooops.

But you’re maybe not even thinking about readers or publishing. You have your characters and your setting and they get along well, but their discussions seem flat and circular. Nothing’s moving. And after a few more words, there’s the Wall. Wow, writing sucks. Writing’s hard.

You’re lacking plot.

And I know where you’re coming from. During my first ten years as a writer, “plot” was something that happened to other people. My characters just went about their daily lives; stuff would happen to them, sometimes for hundreds of pages, and I got lost in that world and couldn’t find a way out. Sometimes, I just killed them. That’s an ending, right? Sometimes, I started on something else, and usually ended up in a very similar place. (Mind you, it was still good practice, but what it wasn’t is a story.)

I’m paraphrasing from other writing teachers, but “stuff happening” isn’t a story. Story is cause and effect. Usually, it’s a character who wants something. Anything. In a gay romance, that can be really easy—he wants the other guy. (Let’s call him John.)

However, why does John want him? Is it pure sex? Is John a bit deranged and wants to own the other guy—very different story, that. Or maybe John really wants the other guy because he’s entered a high-stakes bet. If he can sleep with the other guy, he gets paid a million dollars. That’s “motivation”, and motivation makes things a lot more interesting. Maybe John wants a guy who’s bad for him—why? Is he insecure? Addicted? What need is John trying to fulfil? Think about motivation. It can be fluffy—John is from a broken home and really, really wants to build a happy family. The motivation is to repair the past and work on his inner wounds. Make your character wants something because of a compelling need.

(Also, ideally, the other characters should want something, too. They aren’t just there to talk John into or out of it. They have their own agendas and goals, just like real people.)

Exploring that should get you a few more pages and make the pages you already have better. Characters with desires and inner conflicts and backstories are just more interesting to write and read about.

But you still might only be 30 minutes into our 90-minute movie (or about 15-20,000 words into your novel). Now the true test begins.

Obstacles. On his way to find love, John has to overcome obstacles. Some of them could be internal. (He doesn’t believe in “happy endings”, he’s afraid to get hurt, maybe there’s something about him that holds him back or he thinks makes him unworthy of love.) Others could be external (his lover has been offered a much better job overseas and if John can’t get over himself, his lover is going to leave). It’s even better if there’s a “ticking clock”, a time bomb in the plot that will go off unless John acts (say, his lover needs to accept the new job by Monday).

As John tackles his various obstacles, he needs to suffer setbacks and crises. If his problem is shyness, that needs to come out and ruin his day at a critical moment in time. He needs to take the blow, and he needs to recover. And try again.

Fail, fail again, fail catastrophically, try again, and succeed. Barely. There’s power in that pattern. Fairy tales are built around threes—the prince has three tasks (challenges), and there will be consequences if he fails. Transport that to a romance.

In short, a plot is about a character wanting something, and your job as the writer is to make sure he doesn’t get it until the ending (in gay Romance, he gets the guy, of course). Start with small obstacles, and make them bigger as the character gets better at fighting for what he wants. As the character grows, so do the obstacles grow.

Even shorter, and a quick rule I give people I coach: If you’re stalled out on your book, ruin your character’s day. (And then watch them recover.) Ruin it in a way that really hurts the character’s sense of self. You’re looking for a kick in the balls—where it really, really hurts.

Learn to be cruel. Your character must deserve that happy ending. You’re giving him what he wants, in the end, so make him work for it.

Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London, where he is making his living as a full-time writer, freelance editor/writing coach and gentleman at large. He has 15 years’ experience with ghost-writing, book-doctoring and writer coaching and is qualified in hypnosis and TFT to deal with stress, anxiety, and writer’s block.

With more than 40 releases under his belt, he has written horror, science fiction, cyberpunk, and fantasy as well as contemporary, thriller, and historical erotic queer and straight fiction for houses such as Heyne/Random House, Carina Press, Riptide Publishing and Samhain.

In his spare time, he practices massage, explores historical sites, meets other writers and studies complementary therapies. Visit Aleksandr’s website, and his blog, and follow him on Twitter, where he tweets as @aleksandrvoinov.