If you don’t feel like actuallywriting,prepare for writing:
Open your WIP Word doc
Read the last page again
Scribble notes on what happens next
Once you’ve done this, you might just find yourself wanting to continue after all. And if you don’t, no worries. You’ve made it easier to jump back into it later.
This always works for me! Really good advice!
I do this to get into the writing mood. I can tell myself: “I don’t have to write, no pressure. Look, I’m not writing, this isn’t writing.”
^^GREAT advice!
I started doing something like this for NaNoWriMo this year.
It has turned me from a die-hard pantser to a plantser, and it’s made writing the next scene and the next and the next so much easier.
And the only reason I’m lagging behind now, is because I haven’t been doing this in the last week or so.
Part of me wants to shift the entirety of Magical Fantasy Adventure Land into the normal world instead of splitting it into a separate realm.
Part of me is still annoyed that this fucker still doesn’t have a proper title. Or at least something that sounds better as a place holder.
it’s called Mafalia. that’s your world’s name. ‘MAH-FAR-lee-uh’.
That actually sounds really good as a world name. I’m curious to know where that came from?
it’s the acronym. “Magical Fantasy Adventure Land”-ia becomes MaFAL-ia: Mafalia.
i always find if you need a placeholder name for something, write it out and make up an acronym, adding and removing letters or vowels if need be.
for example:
“The House Where Clio Fell in Love With Him”
“TheHouseWhereClioFellinLoveWithHim”
“THoWeCliFiLWH”
“ThrowecliFiLWH”
“ThrowecliffiLWH”
“ThrowecliffiLWH”
“Throwecliffe”
“Thrawecliffe”
hence ‘the house where Clio fell in love with him’ becomes ‘Thrawecliffe House’. what’s a ‘thraw’? i don’t know. is it on a cliff? maybe; that’s an author’s preogative.
suddenly the name of the house itself throws up new questions which an author in answering goes off down a rabbit hole of worldbuilding.
Holy fuck. That is absolutely amazing advice.
Thank you so much!!!!!
As someone who regularly smashes words together for humorous purposes, I’m appalled I’ve never thought to use it in my writing. Bless you.
good advice
My favourite example of this is Dragon Age. The setting is called Thedas, which comes from calling it “the Dragon Age setting” in development! TheDragonAgeSetting The DAS Thedas
The D&D game that my boyfriend is currently running is based in a city called Isan, which is an acronym for “I Suck At Naming”.
Grab your phone and turn on your recording app. If you don’t have one of those, then grab a piece of paper or open a word document.
Now I want you to pick to a scene. It could be whatever you’re avoiding working on right now or it could be a random scene that you’ve been thinking about for a while. Got one in mind? Great.
Now talk me through it and I don’t mean just tell me what happens. I want you to tell me why you’re writing this scene, what’s its purpose? Who is in it and why are they there? Why does what happens here happen and how does it play into the rest of the tale?
You can do this in several ways. One way is to just talk about the scene in a general sense. To simply give me the puzzle edges that make it fit into the whole. Another way, and the way I tend to do this, is to pick the one of the characters who cause the scene and tell me about them. Why are they causing the scene? What is it about their personality or actions that is making this happen?
If you can’t do what I just told you to do, then you’ve got a problem because you don’t understand your story well enough to tell yourself about it. If you can’t do that, then how do you expect to tell the story to other people?
I do this technique a lot and I’ve found that it’s a godsend when I’m stuck. I record my explanations on my phone and then I listen to them. I ask myself if what I’m saying makes sense and then, when I’m writing the scene, I keep the reason for the scene in mind.
Unfortunately, I doubt that posting any of these monologues would be useful. They’re all about characters and scenes that you’ve never read. However, if this technique sounds interesting to you and you want to know more, then I’ll try to record some of these about scenes from popular books or movies. I’ll pretend that I’m the author and record a short sound bite about why the scene is needed, but only if someone asks because if I’m going to act that pretentious I’ve got to know that at least one person want me to be. Anyone interested?
“Walk away. That might not be everyone’s tactic but when I get really stuck, sometimes you gotta just walk away.”
-Dan Levy to Iowa Universities, April 2021
Photo: I *think* this is from Fashion Magazine
+++++
I think this is good advice for a lot of things, not just writer’s block. Sometimes you just have to walk away, give it a minute and come back to it later.
So every now and then writer’s block takes this horrible form where you have an excellent idea and excellent characters and all the write stuff but for whatever reason, you just cannot get it out of your head. It’s super frustrating and you end up staring at an empty Word document for an hour trying to put these incredible ideas into words and it’s just not happening.Here is how to knock yourself free from writer’s block:
Pick a different scene. So you have the ideas for the story. Maybe the opening you had in mind will come later, but don’t not write the story because of that. So pick a scene that comes a little bit later and just start writing that. It doesn’t have to be perfect but sometimes working on something different will get the old cogs rolling just as they’re supposed to.
Do a quick writing exercise. Pick a super quick writing prompt and just start writing the first thing that comes to mind. I know this sounds weird, but because it’s not your awesome project that you have in mind, you can just let it go and write whatever’s on your mind. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it’ll make you write. After a couple good exercises, I’m always back and ready to write my initial project again.
Take a walk. Sometimes if you’re really struggling, you just need to take a little break. Sure, you’ve got the idea, but sometimes it helps to just sit on it for awhile. I suggest going for a walk, the fresh air will help get rid of the frustration and you’ll have some time to think about your ideas more relaxed.
These are all tried and tested (by me!) - happy writing everyone!
the-maincharacter asked: I have a lot of trouble with beginning a novel, and then getting bored halfway through, abandoning it, and starting a new story. Right now, I’m jumping between about four or five tales. How do I get myself to stop and focus on one story at a time? I’ve tried picking titles out of a hat to force myself to focus on one, I’ve tried writing every day….I don’t know what to do. It seems to happen every time.
This is one of those things you have to train yourself to do over time. Get a journal and write down all your story ideas and the details that go with them. Then, pick the one you want to focus on and stick with it. If new ideas come in before you’re done, write them in your journal and make yourself forget about them.
If you can’t force yourself to stick with the story, you need to address what else might be going on. Perhaps your story isn’t working or you just need to get excited about it again. Maybe you’re getting frustrated with what you’re writing and feel like moving onto something else. Or, maybe you just need to make a timeline or scene list to keep yourself on track. Here are some posts that will help you figure out what’s going on and how to deal with it:
I’ve been listening to another book on writing - Save The Cat! Writes A Novel - and while I greatly enjoyed almost all of it, and found it very helpful, at the very end there was a phrase that made me want to punch the wall.
“There’s no such thing as writer’s block or plotter’s block. There’s only perfectionist’s block.”
The author, Jessica Brody, gave credit for this nonsense to another author, Emily Hainsworth, and I freely admit that I wished both of them great ill at this point in the book.
I’ve made posts on this subject before… I think?… but never mind, I’m going to do it again.
People who say ‘there’s no such thing as writer’s block’ or ‘just push through it’ are like people who say ‘there’s no such thing as PMS’ or ‘depressed people could cheer up if they wanted to’. Only someone who’s never experienced it would say something that stupid. And those of us who have tend to react something along the lines of ‘I HATE YOU, YOU SMUG BASTARD, I HOPE YOU DIE DIE DIE’. (One of my PMS symptoms is intensely homicidal thoughts! Fun!)
But I think part of the problem is that ‘Writer’s Block’ is actually a blanket term, like ‘mental illness’ or ‘chronic pain’. There are multiple types, multiple causes, and multiple ways of handling them. No one approach will work for all of them, and what works great for one will actively worsen another
Here are the four kinds I know about. There may be more, but these are the ones I’ve experienced personally.
If you’re having trouble developing a character for one of your stories, here’s an idea that may help you. Create a Pinterest board for that character and pin the following things:
Things they would like
Food they would eat
Clothes they would wear
Places they like to go
Places they dream of going
Elements of their culture
Elements of their religion (if they have one)
Where they live
Color palettes that fit them
Their aesthetic
Quotes that relate to them
Seeing all of these things together in the same board may help you visualize the character more.
