The way you describe it makes this sound like a problem with railroading the characters into the start of the plot simply in order that later events can happen... but the characters, of course, don't *know* what the plot has in store for them, so they need an immediate reason to get involved.
(This is all a bit tricky for me because historically speaking, my plots have generally arisen *out of* the characters' trains of thought, and their personalities, motivations and backstories likewise -- which is one reason why I can't do the 'skip over this difficult bit and come back to it later', because what happens later will very probably be affected, possibly to a very significant degree, by what the characters specifically said and thought during the bit I'm struggling with; that's how sub-plots arise.)
I realized that none of my characters had a good reason to care about anything that had happened in the plot so far, which meant they had nothing to lose, which meant that nothing was at stake.
But that's only over a relatively short stretch of plot to date, right? So you just need a new way 'in' to the main meat of the story -- a reason to get them where they need to be that makes sense from their perspective rather than just from yours.
the side characters all have pretty much nothing to do
Obvious (silly) question: why are they there? (As in both, why are they on the scene at that particular stage of the plot, and what function do they serve later? Could they just turn up at the point where they are actually needed?)
it's hard to get something done if you're doing it in a way that you know is going to cause problems for you later.
As I said, I personally find it desperately difficult to do major surgery to something that has already been established as part of the timeline, which means I do attempt to get it pretty much finalized before I go on -- changing it later is just so much harder. But that's not the generally-recommended technique!
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Date: 2021-06-04 05:37 pm (UTC)(This is all a bit tricky for me because historically speaking, my plots have generally arisen *out of* the characters' trains of thought, and their personalities, motivations and backstories likewise -- which is one reason why I can't do the 'skip over this difficult bit and come back to it later', because what happens later will very probably be affected, possibly to a very significant degree, by what the characters specifically said and thought during the bit I'm struggling with; that's how sub-plots arise.)
But that's only over a relatively short stretch of plot to date, right? So you just need a new way 'in' to the main meat of the story -- a reason to get them where they need to be that makes sense from their perspective rather than just from yours.
Obvious (silly) question: why are they there? (As in both, why are they on the scene at that particular stage of the plot, and what function do they serve later? Could they just turn up at the point where they are actually needed?)
As I said, I personally find it desperately difficult to do major surgery to something that has already been established as part of the timeline, which means I do attempt to get it pretty much finalized before I go on -- changing it later is just so much harder. But that's not the generally-recommended technique!