My unfinished novel started out as 50,000 words of notes on a story set in an exclusive five star spa resort. It’s centered around the people who work there, and in particular, the protagonist, a male massage therapist. I then wrote out scenes and chapters without clear character arcs nor plot, and ended up with a jig-saw puzzle of almost 140,000 words. After more work I finished a very rough first draft done with 78,000 words written in first person narrative, from the perspective of the male protagonist.

But now, I have become stuck and stopped writing/editing that draft. I’ve been trying to figure out how I might free up this log jam with my story. Writing it in the first person came relatively easy, as it does to most people writing their first novel. But my story is complicated. I fear that it will be misjudged by the reader, as it is full of ethical dilemmas.  I also have a large number of characters, which might confuse readers as to who’s who. I wasn’t happy at all with my draft and felt that I had hit a wall and didn’t know how to adequately tell the story.