Trouble Spots: Writer’s Block
Courtesy of M. T. Dremer

 
            Writer’s block; all writers get it, and more likely than not, all writers hate it. I know I do. There is nothing more frustrating than hitting a mental wall when trying to make one of those New York Times Bestsellers.
            But, this is where I hope to help you. No, I don’t have a miracle drug that frees up your brain, or any mental exercises that make ideas flow more smoothly. But what I do have is a few suggestions that will hopefully make your time productive, even if your mind is not.

 For lack of a better idea.
            Okay so you’re chugging along, writing your novel/short story/whatever and you meet something new. Maybe it is a new character, new world area, or perhaps a pivotal part of the story, but you aren’t quite sure where to go next. What does this new character look like, what is his/her personality, how will they play into later parts of the story? What does this new world area look like? What people/creatures/town exists within it? How will it play into later parts of the story? What happens to make this point pivotal, and where will it take the rest of the story?
            See a pattern here? We just hit writers block because we introduced something new that we weren’t entirely familiar with and because of it, it brought our story to a grinding halt. Usually this can be prevented by having a sort of index of characters and areas so you can pick and choose from it later on when you need it. However if you are like me, creating characters and areas you might use is a waste of your valuable time and energy.
            So what do we do when we are just winging it and one of these new items comes into play? Well unfortunately the only way to get past this hurtle is to plow right through it; a technique I often use when creating a new character on a whim. I will first come up with a name and the most basic of descriptions (hair/clothes/eyes) and plunk that down on the page. Then I write the interactions with the main character and the new character and in the process slowly develop who this character is. It is almost as if I am the main character and I have no idea who this person is so the only way to find out is ask. This is usually slow going, but sometimes it is the only option, especially if you are more of a free roaming type of writer (meaning you don’t really follow outlines.)
            Another way to avoid this is to ask yourself: do I really need a new character/area to write this? If there is a character you already introduced that isn’t being used, feel free to reintroduce them, use them again and maybe it will become a shocker twist even you didn’t see coming.
            Both of those techniques apply to area and character, but what about pivotal plot points? You get this idea; something to happen to your characters, but you quickly get in over your head and you can’t get back out.
            This happens to me often. I will be struck with an idea that I think is good and I will immediately take the characters in that direction, only to hit that mental wall because I don’t know how to get them out of it. Either that or I simply find myself bored or confused with the idea.
            In this case sometimes it is better to abandon the idea. If you find yourself just uninterested in writing that event then back up; go back to the point where you stopped enjoying it and try again. This can often result in a lot of deleting, but to get your book perfect, it is necessary. Just remember if you find it boring to write, then your reader will find it boring to read.
            Now let’s say you want to keep the idea but you are just struggling with where to make it go. Well in this case you might want to take the “plow straight through” technique. This basically says endure the boredom/pain/anguish until you leave that event and hopefully when you finally get out, new ideas will come and you will be back on track. Sometimes you simply need to overcome a small hurtle and the story will be just fine.
            It is also sometimes a good idea to step back from the trouble spot. Maybe as you were writing it you felt like every word you put down was utter crap, so you walk away for a while. You will be surprised how different your writing sounds when you read it several weeks or even days later.
            I had many times where I thought what I was writing was garbage, only to stop and come back a month or so later and think it was writing gold.

 Getting sick of the story.
            We all want to write a story for the ages, but how often do you find yourself fed up with your current story? I know I do. And don’t worry when I say this, it doesn’t mean your idea no longer works for a novel/story market. You will get sick of any story if you see it long enough. Just like if you read your favorite book, over and over and over again, you would eventually get sick of it, I guarantee it. When I spend to long on any one piece of writing, I loose my interest for it, and in the process, my writing quality for it will decline.
            In this case my best advice to you is to just leave it alone. You are sick of the story for a reason; don’t choke the thing to death in hopes of getting it to a publisher faster.
            Just step away from it and don’t look at it for a long while.

            Now one of the problems in this technique is a lack of productivity. For me I set a goal to write something every day, and if I don’t get that in, then I feel like I haven’t really accomplished anything. So in this case, just write something else.
            If you want to get progress done but can’t stand the sight of your manuscript, just start writing something different; anything. I myself usually have several novels being written at the same time just because I keep switching back and forth when ever I get sick of one. This allows me to progress in my writing technique and style, while still getting closer to my goal of being published.
            Now of course I can understand not wanting to start another piece of writing especially if you are writing something like an epic novel. Starting another is just going to create more problems and you will be even farther from getting the first one published.
            Don’t worry, I understand the feeling. In this case you can write your own set of Trouble Spots. The first two entries into this feature were just me rambling on about an area I struggled at. For some reason it just felt good for me to acknowledge the area of weakness and then brainstorm about ways to fix it.
            Another good practice is to have a healthy mixture of writing and editing. I know, a lot of us hate the editing part of writing, but if you want your story to be up to your own standards, you have to bite the bullet and go over it with a fine tooth comb.
            Now by mixing these two things, neither one ever becomes too tedious. For example, say you spend an entire week just re-reading your story and fixing punctuation, enhancing descriptions and filling in plot holes. Then the next week, you go back to where you left off and pick up writing again. In each case you have contributed greatly to your one story, but you have also distributed your mind so as not to strain it in any one direction.

 Complete and utter emptiness.
            Okay so now you are trying to create an entirely new story, but have no characters, no setting, and no plot. There is no doubt that this is a heavy contributor to writers block, and there is no sure fire answer to it. However I can provide some tips that tend to help me.
            Start with the setting, it may not seem like the most crucial element in a story, but when you have no ideas what-so-ever it is a good place to start. Okay now don’t try to think of a setting in terms of plot, don’t think of it in terms of out doing any other author, and don’t think of it in terms of architecture. Think only of an environment you really like. This environment could be anything, it could be a place you visited on vacation, saw in a movie, or even played in a video game. The only requirement is that you liked the area and the mood that went with it.
             Okay, now that you have your area start building a general plot. Now this will no doubt be a similar plot to the movie and or video game it came from (if you in fact chose one of those). But don’t worry, having a ghost story in a spooky mansion isn’t really stealing an idea, so don’t freak out if your story starts sounding like the one in the environment you originally went with. Remember I asked you to choose this environment for a reason.
            Okay, now that you have a general area and plot, start putting in characters. This can be pretty basic. Just ask yourself, will there be a love story? If so you will need a male and female character (you can do male and male or female and female if that is how you want to go, but the point is you need two characters that will invariably fall in love). Okay now ask yourself will it be light hearted or heavy hearted? Will you need a character for comic relief? Or do you want your characters so terrifying that your readers won’t even be able to breathe out?
            Hopefully at this point you have the ball rolling, ideas for character traits and plot points are forming inside your head. Now comes the originality factor. Obviously you do not want to copy the story your environment originally came from. (For those of you that simply chose a vacation spot, or some other non-trademarked environment, this doesn’t apply to you.)
            To help illustrate this I will bring up an example of my own experiences here. For a science fiction novel I wrote, I wanted to recreate the atmosphere from a video game. Okay basically it was an alien planet covered in water with a floating city on top. The story for that area revolved around an underwater station and ancient map on the sea bed. This in itself isn’t the most original idea, but it was the feel I got while playing through it that I was trying to recreate.
            So aside from name changes my water world didn’t have a city floating on it but a single military station that could barely contain the size of a small building. My character was a young man and had been living on this water world for more than a year, where as the character in the game was grown and spends less than a few days on his planet.
            There were many aliens in the game and different activities to partake in while on the planet. In my story there are no aliens and very little to do.
            The reason the character in the game was there was to find the map at the bottom of the ocean, which was a semi ancient structure. Mine was also an ancient structure, but it was there for different reasons, contained with it a story of its own, and the character never intended to find it.
            Do you see where I am going with this? I know it may sound similar on paper, but I assure you if someone were to read that novel, they would not be able to make the connection to that particular video game. Unless of course they read this review… (Kudos to anyone who can figure out what game this is.)
            But that isn’t what matters. What matters is that you like your story, and the best way to start a new one is to put it in an environment or mood that you like. Hopefully then you will start to develop characters you can relate to and invariably a plot that is original and entertaining.

 My writing can’t match up to my ideas.
            This isn’t a common problem, as far as I know, but I thought I would mention it anyway.
            Let us say that you have big, big ideas but currently your writing skill isn’t high enough to thoroughly implement those ideas. Or perhaps you are editing one of your older stories but can find nothing to change.
            In these cases I suggest picking up your favorite book and start reading it. Then as you get into the thick of enjoyment in the book, start writing, or editing.
            Through my own experiences, I have learned that the book you are currently reading, or just finished reading, influences the way you write. I only realized this after having several large writer’s blocks, only to figure out, the book I was reading was crap. Well I won’t say crap but I didn’t like it at all and worse yet I had just read a bad book before it, so it was small wonder why I was hitting so many mental walls.
            Almost immediately after that I picked up a few good books, and I was back on track, though I never forgot that lesson.
            So if you are experiencing an unusual amount of trouble with your writing, take a look at what you are reading. A bad book may be taking its toll on your skills and interest in your own book, or maybe you haven’t been reading lately at all. The best way to enhance your skills as a writer is to read and so if you haven’t been reading and are beginning to struggle, pick up that favorite book of yours or go out and buy one that you really want to read. You will be surprised how much it helps.

 It happens to the best of us.
            The last bit of advice I can give you is to not give up. Don’t go thinking that the writers block is a sign that your skills are finally running on empty. Writers block happens to the best of us. Do you think J. R. R. Tolkien never deleted and re-wrote events as he brought his characters through Middle Earth? Do you think J. K. Rowling never sat back in her chair and stared at a blank page for just a little too long? Do you think H. G. Wells never once set aside his work so that he could look on it later with a clear mind?
            The thing that truly separates the published from the unpublished is determination. If you keep up the work and never stop trying then there is no reason you can’t achieve your goal.