QOD: “What’s one thing I’m overthinking instead of doing?”

STORY PROMPT: What’s one thing my lead character overthinks instead of acting?

A nice trick here is that if you have a HEROIC protagonist, they will learn not to overthink, that a limitation at one point in their lives will offer insight they can use for victory.
On the other hand, a villainous protagonist might well be doomed to failure. In that case, they might start out as impressively intelligent until you catch a whiff of OCD. In the Tell Tale Heart, the protagonist murders an innocent old man, and buried his body under the floorboards. Police come to interview him at 3am, because someone in another room complained about noise. All the protagonist has to do is sit and wait, and the cops would have gone away. Instead his guilty mind is filled with fantasies that the old man isn’t dead, his heart now beating thunderously beneath the floor, until the killer shrieks in horror and pulls the boards up with his bare hands.
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Of course, this doesn’t have to be a matter of madness. Merely over-analyzing every option will paralyze you. I knew a writer who was one of the great short-story writers of the 60’s and 70’s. It all just flowed for him, one of the most successful “pantsers” I’ve ever known. (No, it wasn’t Harlan Ellison).
But as time and recreational drugs had their way with him, he became paralyzed with the infinite web of choices blooming at each story decision. If an editor gave him exact direction he could still write but it became difficult to do anything except movie adaptations, a terrible waste of a once-stellar talent.

This is why we have the LIFEWRITING Six-Step process that begins: “Write a sentence a day.”

Commit to that, and you will either open the door to disciplined dreaming, or identify a psychological/emotional issue you need to resolve.

We’ll talk more about this “stuckedness” and how to move through it tomorrow on LIFEWRITING LIVE, AUG 8, 12 NOON PACIFIC, on Zoom at www.thefiredance.com