Okay. Writer’s block is probably one of THE most common issues writers and authors have when writing their books and short stories. It’s like a paralysis of the brain because there’s too much going on...or nothing at all. Which sucks! As creatives, there’s nothing more annoying than not knowing what you're doing or ow to get things going in a project. But lucky for us, I’ve come up with a plan that might help a few of us overcome writer's block when it happens.
There are a few different factors that can lead to writer's block, so there are a few different strategies you can use to tackle it. You may need to use several strategies or just one, but I promise all of them have helped me and others with our writing, whether we've been staring a blank page for days or we haven't even started because we couldn't think of anything worth writing. Here are the writer's block strategies in a nutshell:
Changing Your Creative Process
For writers who get caught up on small details in their novels
For writers who often struggle with plot holes and inconsistencies they have no idea how to fix
For writers who have ideas for a story but don't where to start
Changing Your Character Writing
For the writer with dialogue blocks
For writers feeling their character makes a scene impossibly difficult to write
For the writer never feeling "in the mood" to write
For the writer feeling like they can't focus no matter how hard they try
For writers who never seem inspired to write the parts of the novel they're currently working on
For the writer feeling their writer's block is only for a few spots in their novels
If you think any of these are more suited to your writer's block issue, feel free to skip there. For the rest of us, let's begin.
The Creative Process: Planning Out The Story
One of the ways I know I (and some of you) may get stuck when writing is because we went in without any proper planning. We had new ideas, rushed in, and then got quickly caught in a nebulous web of “what do I do now?”. So, this time, we’re going to plan.
Something one of my elementary school teachers said to me about writing stories that I never forgot is the Watermelon/Seed method. In this analogy, your story idea is the watermelon. It's big and imposing and slightly overwhelming, especially when you have a juicier one. But what would you do if someone asked you for the seeds to your watermelon? You would break in the watermelon into pieces, and the smaller, more uniform pieces you had, the easier it would be to pick the seeds out.
So how do we do this with stories? First we cut the watermelon into bigger pieces: the beginning, the middle, and the end. Then we focus on each new piece to cut them into smaller pieces: what are the 3-5 main things that happen in the beginning of the story? What are those things for the middle? What are those things for the end? Then, we would pick out our seeds in each new slice we have: how do those events in each section of the story connect? What are the scenes that make them up? How do those scenes form chapters? Now that you have your seeds and your slices, you can enjoy your watermelon however you want, whether that's starting from the beginning, making a more detailed outline, or something else entirely.
Let’s break it down with an example. If my story is about a grand wizard who sends out humanity’s last hope to defeat a dragon, my beginning might be the wizard looking for a worthy hero or simple day in the life of our would be hero before they meet the wizard; my middle might be the hero going on his long journey with several trials ahead; and my ending would be the hero finding the dragon and slaying it. That would look something like this:
Watermelon: Humanity’s last hope is chosen to go on a quest to defeat the dragon terrorizing the land
Beginning: Main character goes through a simple morning and then meets the wizard
Middle: Main character goes out on the quest and faces hardship along the way
End: Main character finds and slays the dragon
Simple, right? But those are huge watermelon chunks, we want seeds. So now, we need to keep slicing it apart to get the seeds. Every arc of the story should have key events that flesh it out and set things up for the act that follows (yes, this includes the ending, especially if you are writing a series).
Let’s start with our example of a beginning: What are the key events that make up the beginning and lead to the middle? Maybe the main character establishes an important skill they would need for the journey in front of the wizard. Maybe the wizard is established in the community and has created a contest for anyone to enter so they can pick the right dragon slayer. Maybe the main character has to compete and win, which sets them up with an antagonist and an ally because of how they played in the contest. So now our beginning/ first act looks like this:
Beginning summary: The main character meets the wizard and is chosen for an epic journey
Main event 1: The main character is introduced and is established to have a skill needed for the journey
Main event 2: The wizard sets up a contest with trials they believe the hero will have to face on the real journey, which main character signs up for
Main event 3: Main character participates in these trials and wins, gaining an ally and an enemy along the way
The same goes for the middle, ask yourself what events need to happen to propel the plot forward in each act: What trials do you think the main character should face? How many of them will there be? Is there anything they might need or a person who could accompany them through the trials?
And the end: Where does the fight take place? How will the main character fight the dragon? How will the dragon attack the main character? What happens that causes the main character to beat the dragon? Use questions like these to come up with 3-5 main events.
But we're not done yet. The main events are just normal watermelon slices, which are still not the seeds we're looking for. So what are the seeds? The scenes. The main events are the big peaks of an act, but we need to connect them and also make them up with scenes.
Take our beginning act for example: we have a main character with an important skill opt into a contest and win. But the first two events are slightly removed from each other. How does the main character know about the contest and why do they decide to sign up? Furthermore, how do we show that they're capable in the skill that we've chosen for them? And where is the dragon in this story, how has the dragon impacted humans' lives so much that it needs to be killed? Maybe the dragon has scorched a lot of the land and continues to do so, which has caused personal hardship for the main character and others.
For the introduction of a skill, maybe the main character have a specific place they've been training their whole life and we show a training session. We also threw out the idea that the wizard sees them before, maybe the wizard sees the main character practicing the skill and approaches them to ask if they would enter the contest. Maybe the main character also has a scene where they need to think about whether or not to enter. So now our first main event looks like this:
Main event 1: The main character is introduced and is established to have a skill needed for the journey
Scene 1: Main character is introduced and we see the devastation the dragon has caused them personally
Scene 2: Main character leaves home and goes to their practice spot
Scene 3: Wizard passes by as main character is training and is impressed
Scene 4: Wizard asks main character to join the upcoming contest, main character is unsure
Scene 5: Main character struggles with the decision and ultimately decides to join when the time comes
Now the first two events are connected and we have a few core scenes established to help us when writing the beginning of the story. We can do this process for the whole story, and that will leave you with a somewhat comprehensive outline for your story that you can add to or rearrange to better fit your writing style. By breaking down the story into smaller pieces, it becomes a less herculean task to write. But sometimes there’s more to a story that’s blocking you than just the plot. So...
Use Those Writing Skills and Flesh Out Your Characters!
It might just be my personal biases but I think character work is some of the most fundamental parts of prep that trip even some great writers up. Knowing your characters well can make all the difference between smooth sailing and getting blocked.
My sister, who’s a fantastic writer, once asked my help on a scene she was writing, she couldn't get the conversation to flow and make sense the way she wanted, and because she couldn’t get it to gel, she ended up stuck in general. One question, got her over the hump. One.
“What does each character want in this scene?”
That’s it. Because she could break the scene down into character motivations and she knew her characters, the block was pretty much immediately cleared. Whereas if she didn’t know her characters well, that scene might have continued to trip her up.
So how do we get to know our characters? We study them of course. We do have another article about dialogue that may help (See Upgrade Your Dialogue), as well as a character sheet that can get you to think a bit more about what your character needs to be fleshed out that you can get here. But here the three main branches:
Who are they: What do they look like? What are their fears and dreams? What personal flaws and strengths do they have? What is their backstory? How do they generally behave? What are their morals?
What do they want: What is their motivation to push the plot forward? What parts of their personality drive them to do what they do?
How do they change: How do their values, behavior, and motivations change as the story goes on? Why do those changes occur? How do these changes affect the story?
When you have a basic understanding of these three components for a character, the story becomes a lot easier to write. If you have too many ideas on how a scene could go, referring to what the characters present in the scene are most likely to do can cut down on the millions of ideas keeping you paralyzed in indecision. It can also give you ideas of what you should do when you have NO ideas on what a scene should entail. The characters essentially become a person you can turn to for help on what you should write next! How amazing is that?
Change Your Writing Environment
for some writers, writer's block isn't necessarily about the words on the page but about the environment you're writing in. Maybe you're writing in your bed, or at the tiny free corner of a cluttered desk, or sitting in the middle of a communal space with lots of busy noise that's blocked your creativity. These places may be fine for other writers, but it might be what's tripping you up.
It's possible your writing space subconsciously stresses you out, which leads to procrastination, lack of inspiration and blocks. That's not what we want! So here's what we do: think of where you feel most relaxed and productive. If that's already your writing space, great! But if it's not, try comparing your current writing space to where you feel most comfortable and see where your writing environment comes up short ... and change those things.
Maybe you work best in tidy places, so tidy up that designated space. Maybe you focus best outside, so try getting some fresh air and start writing! Maybe you need absolute quiet, so write in a quiet place in your home. It may be the smallest thing causing your inability to get things on the page.
But if you still struggle with procrastination after these tweaks, you may need to try our next fix:
Jump Around Your Story
So you have a proper outline using the Watermelon/Seed method, you know your characters pretty well, but you’re still stuck. What do you do? Sometimes the best thing to do is take a break and come back. For some people that means stop writing altogether and come back after a set amount of time, but what I like to do is skip around and write where motivation takes me.
This may be a bit controversial, but there’s no rule that says you have to write linearly. Maybe you’re stuck on what happens in chapter 3, maybe skip to writing chapter 5 because you have more ideas about how it should go. Then knowing what you’ve written for 5, 3 becomes a bit easier to get through. Heck you can even come up with a list of chapters and a loose idea of what each should include (using the watermelon/seed method of course) and just pick whichever chapter you feel inspiration take hold to write that day, rinse and repeat until you're done.
This may lead to problems about continuity, but if you keep track of the things you’ve written, it should be quite easy to fix when looking at the wholes manuscript together as it should be. Break the rules! Write in the way that works best for you, and I’m sure you’ll get through your writer's block.
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