Have you ever written yourself into a corner?

You know it when it happens: Your characters have been humming along, minding their own business, when all of a sudden you realize… there’s nowhere left for them to go. You have a place where they need to be, or an event that has to happen, but the transition is gone.

It’s like coming to a gorge where you can see the other side, but the bridge is down. Or maybe it’s still there, but it’s wooden, rickety, and likely to come crashing down the moment you step foot on it.

What do you do when this happens? 

(Oh, you expect me to be a fount of advice at this moment? Nope, purely soliciting your thoughts this time around. )

I’m working on a short story and I seem to have written my main character into a corner. She’s an assassin and suspects that the man whose contract she just carried out intended for the assassination to cause a war. This is highly inconvenient. It’s also important to the story that the identity of the man remains a secret… and my main character is about to be deported for diplomatic reasons. Uh… so that means she can’t stick around… but it wouldn’t make sense for her to stick around, based on the political scheme of the world…

Have your eyes glazed over yet?

So, she’s stuck in a corner with nowhere to go. I see a few options here:

1. Back up, try something completely different
2. Introduce a random but interesting conflict (she gets sick? someone else dies?)
3. Introduce a new character who can provide conflict
4. Change the rules of the world

Is there another option here? I might try a few different things and see what happens, but I’m curious to know how other people deal with ‘stuck’ scenarios. I know of writers who tear out the pages and start over from where the problem started, but is that always necessary?