Lack of motivation is often the sign that a new story cycle is beginning. If you or your character are in this position, here’s how you can navigate (and narrate) this important stage.

Note: this article refers to the One Page Novel story structure.

☞ Quotations are from T.E. Lawrence’s prose translation of the Odyssey.

How to Write the Stasis

01 | Feeling unmotivated in the Stasis is natural because the momentum of the old cycle is fading or has died away completely. As the old Resolution slowly turns into the new Stasis, the world around the character seems drained of vitality; circumstances may reflect the ideas of lack, absence, and dwindling resources. Activities that previously gave pleasure and a sense of agency transform into motions devoid of meaning and efficacy.

Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, is described as being in a state of powerless despondency as he watches the “slow sack of [his] innocent home” and dreams of his father’s return:

“He sat despondent in the hurly, fancying to himself his honest father’s sudden arrival from somewhere, somehow: and the scatter there would be, through the palace, of these wasters when they saw him stride in to regain men’s respect and king it honourably once more over his household.”

1. How does the world around the character reflect the themes of lack and absence?
2. What circumstances make the character feel powerless and directionless?
3. What is their passive dream of rescue from these circumstances?

02 | Recognise that the Stasis is always the point of least awareness in terms of the story arc. Each subsequent stage represents an increase in awareness. So if you feel you have no clue what to do, think, or even believe, don’t be hard on yourself by giving these feelings a negative interpretation.
In the Odyssey, this lack of awareness is brought to the audience’s attention through the conversation of the gods, which also serves as a précis for the story:

“Athene the clear-eyed, the Goddess, answered and said: “Father and Lord of all, Kronides, if indeed the ineffable Gods now judge it fit that prudent Odysseus should return, then let us call Hermes, our usher, the killer of Argus, and despatch him straight to Ogygia, the island of that nymph with the lovely hair: to warn her how it is become our fixed act that the dauntless one be allowed to set out homeward forthwith. For my part I shall go to Ithaca and rouse his son Telemachus, instilling some tardy purpose into his spirit, so that he may call his Greek exquisites to council and give check to the mob of wooers besetting his mother Penelope, the while they butcher his wealth of juicy sheep and rolling-gaited, screw-horned oxen. I will send the youth to Sparta—yes, and to sandy Pylos—to ask those he meets for news of his dear father’s return: not that he will hear anything, but his zeal will earn him repute among men.””

1. How can you show the character’s lack of awareness of their state or their inability to take action?
2. How can you show the character’s willingness or unwillingness to change? Are they eager for something new, or are they unaware even of the standstill they’ve reached?
3. In contrast to the character themselves, who is aware of the character’s lack of awareness and motivation?

03 | How is the Stasis the Resolution of the previous cycle? Though it may seem like an unwelcome situation, the Stasis actually contains all the elements necessary to begin the new cycle — and these elements (experiences, assets, allies, etc.) came from the previous cycle’s Resolution. So if you can identify the results of the previous Resolution state, you can apply them to directing the character on their new arc.

The Odyssey, as the sequel to the Iliad, deals with the consequences of the Trojan war, and of Odysseus’s attempts to return home to Ithaca. His state of entrapment at the beginning of the story is the result of Calypso saving him “as he clung astride his vessel’s keel, alone and adrift in the wine-dark ocean”. Poseidon’s grudge against Odysseus, combined with the support of the other gods cause him to be swept into a conflict that further frustrates his desperate desire to see his home and his wife again.

Yet then the God, the Earth-Shaker, spied him from far off by the mountains of the Solymi, by which way he was returning from Aethiopia. The mind of Poseidon was mightily enraged when he saw who was sailing his sea. With a wagging of the head he began to mutter to himself, “There now, while I have been away amongst the Aethiopians these gods have changed their mind about Odysseus. Alas, he nears the land of the Phaeacians where the decree runs that he shall escape the balance of the miseries he has encountered. However I think I can give him yet a long excursion into sorrow.”

1. What is the character’s previous Resolution state?
2. How did the earlier Resolution prepare them for the new story cycle?

04 | The character’s inability to perceive the story-to-come may give them a feeling of unease and lack, but in hindsight the Stasis is often a period of calm comfort. The lack of motion can be perceived as both stagnation and peace, and ignorance of the unknown as either foolishness or bliss.

Calypso states this very clearly to Odysseus:

“Kinsman of Zeus and son of Laertes, many-counselled Odysseus: is it your true wish, even yet, to go back to your own country? God forgive you: may you be happy there! Ah, did but the mirror of your mind show you what misfortune must yet fill your cup before you attain the home you seek, verily you would dwell here with me always, keeping my house and your immortality; to the utter rejection of this day-long and every-day yearning which moves you to behold your wife. Think not however that I avow myself her less than rival, either in figure or in parts. It were out and out impious for a mere woman to vie in frame and face with immortals.”

1. Consider the first chapters of your favourite stories.
2. How can you hint at a future perspective of the Stasis?
3. How can you use the idea of hindsight to increase suspense in the peaceful beginning of the story?