Took me 6 days to admit my prompt outline was the problem

I kept blaming my writing block, but it turned out my outline had 8 subplots with zero connection, which is why every scene felt like a dead end. Anyone else found that trimming the outline down to 3 threads fixed their pacing way faster than any writing trick?

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the_kai17d ago

God, yes, this hit way too close to home lol. I spent a whole month stuck on chapter 4 and kept thinking I just needed to "find the flow" or whatever. Then I finally counted my plot threads and it was like 7 different storylines, none of them touching each other. Trimming it down to 3 main ones felt like taking a breath after holding it for hours, suddenly every scene had a clear reason to exist. The pacing almost fixed itself once the outline was simple, I barely had to do anything else. It's wild how we blame our brains before we blame the actual structure.