I HAVE WRITER'S BLOCK!!!!!!!!!! WHY GOD, WHY!?

[ObeyBunny]

Wow, I forgot I started this thread. You'd think I'd remember this kind of thing. Oh well.

The original purpose of this thread was to compile a list of Writer’s block killing activities and suggestions in order to help writers get through to the next burst of inspiration.
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My suggestion:
(When you're stuck not knowing what to do when making a fiction story):
Take what ever you've writen so far and make a flow chart (or a bulleted list) out of it. Sometimes the flow chart idea helps you figure out what you want to do next in your story, sometimes it helps you find the fundimental flaw that has been keeping you stuck.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Anybody else have a writing prompt they wish to share? Does it deal with writing in general or a spesific situation (like helping Sci-fi writers create a believable alien)?

/)_/)
('.-')
/(")(")

 

[ObeyBunny]

Do as your charactor

If you’re having trouble figuring out what your character is likely to do next because you can’t relate to what your character is currently going through (or if you simply want to make sure that your character isn’t doing anything atypical of his personality), then try this technique:

Whatever scene you’re stuck on, put yourself in a similar situation as your character.:workout:
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Example:

• If your character is a scout who spends at least part of his time camping in the woods and setting cooking fires, you should try
  1. setting up a tent made of bed sheets and sticks,
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  2. then try worming up some hotdogs in a frying pan over your grill (you don’t use propane to fuel the fire, though),
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  3. then try curling up inside your tent and sleeping for an hour.

• If your character is a murderer but you can’t seem to put yourself in his state of mind, then try this exercise:
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  1. Do a google search on peoples’ faces,
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  2. print out one picture that is small enough to leave plenty of white space around the photo so that you can write things next to the picture.
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  3. Next to the picture, write several words and phrases explaining why they deserve to die, how you would do it, and why it would be fun.
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  4. Next, at the top of the page, give the face a name that sounds pleasant to you.
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  5. Finally, burn the photo
  this accomplishes two things. First, you’ve (in your mind) killed that person. Second, you don’t want criminal looking stuff in your house. DON’T SAVE THE PHOTO!!!!!!!

• If your character is an alien in a space ship and you’re having trouble making that character seem believable, try this exercise:
  1. Build a model of some of the rooms of the spaceship out of old shoe boxes. Alternatively, if you have the time and materials, you can dress up a room in your house to look like some of the rooms of the spaceship- but I don’t suggest this if you happen to be working on several stories at once.
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  2. Next Think of your character’s menial duties that aren’t related to the plot (like washing laundry, cutting bricks of compacted coffee grounds into usable portions, sorting through his personal mail, removing hand written “U R STOOPID FUCKER” signs taped to his locker.) This will help your audience recognize that your character has gone through significant changes from his regular life to when the first event of the story happened. Your character can compare what ever hard tasks he has to the easy but boring tasks he’s used to.
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  3. Another thing you can do is to cook some alien looking food (cook pancakes that were fried in black food coloring, served with a side of dry seaweed paper stuff that raps around sushi)
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  4. spend the afternoon living like an alien (contemplating how much you don’t want to do any of those menial tasks you thought of earlier)

This technique should work even for parts of your story that you aren’t stuck on. We readers can accept that your character eventually started a fire and camped successfully, but it would make reading those passages much more engaging if you’re able to draw in your readers with a scene’s sensory detail, character emotion, genuine struggle, and moment to moment thoughts.

So go out and experience your character’s trials for yourself. Try building a wood fire and feeling the humiliation when you waste half your matches building a fire that lasted 5 minutes.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Ask people what they’d do if they were in a similar situation as your character.
Example:
“What would you do if your husband died and your son blamed you as a murder (and the son would not believe you if you say ‘I did not kill your father’)?”

Or

“What would you do if you spent all of your life on a carnival cruse ship when, one day, it crashes on land. And while you’re searching for food, the ship gets fixed and sails away from the island without you?” (if you can’t tell, the ‘carnival cruse ship’ is actually a paper thin allegory for a generational spaceship, and crashing on land is supposed to represent landing on a planet.)

 

[ReadingRainbows]

Your adorable?

I'd prove to my son I loved his father too much to ever kill him If he doesn't believe, I'd prove it logically.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Your adorable?

I'd prove to my son I loved his father too much to ever kill him If he doesn't believe, I'd prove it logically.

Your name is Jan?
Sorry, I just took those names (and that story) and used them in a throw-away plot to illistrate what I meant by "put what you had in a flow chart."

 

[ObeyBunny]

No one is interested in making writing promts? Should I delete the thread?

 

[Habba]

On a Scientific Writing class my teacher gave me few tips how to avoid writer's block. Even thought it's not creative writing, I think these tips might actually help...

First of all, when you finish your writing session, don't finish your sentence. Leaving the last sentence/paragraph unfinished, you instantly have something to start working on when you get back to your text next time.

The second option would be trying to get into "a flow". A flow is a state of mind where things come naturally to you, and your mind becomes reactive towards the process. That is, whatever you do, you do without much thinking. To obtain such a state, there are multiple exercises. One such a technique is to just make yourself write down everything that comes in your mind. Anything and everything, even thought it wouldn't make much sense. Soon you'll get the hang of it, and you'll be able to produce text that makes sense without much effort.

 

[ObeyBunny]

On a Scientific Writing class my teacher gave me few tips how to avoid writer's block. Even thought it's not creative writing, I think these tips might actually help...

First of all, when you finish your writing session, don't finish your sentence. Leaving the last sentence/paragraph unfinished, you instantly have something to start working on when you get back to your text next time.

Interesting technique. I wonder if it can be used for passages that you've already finished.

I'm going to try it tonight: I'll take a few scenes that I've already completed and delete the endings to them (after making and saving copies, of course) and then see how many new scenes I can draft up.

 

[Accept]

Should I delete the thread?

Not sure the topic is going to draw a large audience. Not all writers experience writer's block, and if they don't, what advice could they offer? I will continue to follow the thread, but have nothing much to offer beyond an answer to the question asked.

That answer is no.

 

[Valiant]

Writers block cure, YLJ style:

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[YOUTUBE="0QdbeM2JWYE"]Rocky Road to Dublin[/YOUTUBE]

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Waking up and walking out into:

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Make one of these and stay out for the whole day.

Bring food and your tattered self.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Buy a doll or a stuffed animal that has the likeness of your character. Just before bed, sit that doll/stuffed animal on your lap and loudly think phrases and questions like “Why didn’t you attack the bad guy when he was powerless?” or “Tell me what you did in your freshman year of college.” Or “If it hadn’t been for (some story related circumstance), would you still have (something the character did)?”

Go to bed with those thoughts on your mind. Keep a pad of paper, a pen, and a book light next to your bed. If the answer comes to you in the middle of the night, don’t wait until morning for you to write it down.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Do repetitive tasks that require you to move your hands

• Like scrubbing a spot on the floor
• Like sanding down a corner of a piece of furniture
• Like hand writing the letter “e” over and over and over again
• Like molding clay until it’s soft

Much of the time, your mind wanders to new places that you simply wouldn’t get to if you sat at your computer and screamed “TYPE GOD DAMN IT” to yourself.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Copy the words of your most recent E-mails and paste them in a sentence scrambler program. Then, read through the lines of gibberish. Sometimes, you’ll get two or three word gems that will spark inspiration for a 12 paragraph paper.

(Here is an example of some gibberish that I was able to get from one of these programs: nothing now formed there’s monsters, am to I tight land. It’s then they mildly one reader. gang combination stable the a still is to a use his shit possible infrequently moonlit the they see newly motivation pox.)

It only seems like a colossal waist of time until you try it

 

[ObeyBunny]

Sometimes writer’s block is the result of having only one perspective, one experience, one unvarying set of standard practices that you have thoroughly explored and exhausted all possible untapped creative avenues.

In other words, sometimes there’s just too much fiber running through the shit canals of your mind (as one ranting gryphon put it) and the only way to purge yourself of those long lumpy ropes of writer’s block is to do something different for a change.

Try something that you usually do in one way, a different way. Try gaining some new experiences.
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Here is a list of suggestions:

• Take a hot soaking bath in the middle of the night with the lights off. (Once everyone has gone to bed, and your house is therefore silent)
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• Read a passage in a book word for word backwards.
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• Try communicating a concept with smells and colors only. (If you want to say “I am sad” you might try “Blue-purple-black. Strong mint and black liquorish.”) Or how about the more complex statement, “I am getting sadder.” --- “Yellow- light pink and vanilla. Green and peach smell. Green blue. Dark blue.
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• Buy a pair of cheep sunglasses (no more than 2 dollars) and take them home and hold the lenses over a fire. Let the plastic warp and discolor. Once the glasses are cool enough to touch (and are not emitting noxious fumes) ware them all day or until your eyes adjust. At the same time, bandage up your ears so that you hear muffled voices the entire time. (I suggest you do this if you have all day to be alone). Do anything else that you can think of that will cut off your ability to sense things properly (that does not involve harming yourself.)

 

[ObeyBunny]

Think of how someone or something that is not within your demographic in any important way (For example: not male, not human, not bipedal, not mortal, not an English speaker, etc.) Now start thinking of common things (Cell phones, pointy roofed houses, green lawns rimmed by sidewalk, diet coke, white tiled bathrooms) and thinking about how that person or thing would think about those items.

Example: This is what a an animal that has spent much of its life in the wild might think plates and bowls:

------“Humans have an interesting sanitary behavior when it comes to feasting on meals. They eat off of broad, shallow circular seashell like items that allow all food items to remain discreetly separated from both the raised eating platform and the floor beneath. This behavior must be a vestigial practice to prevent dirt from clinging to the base of moist foods that normally occurs if one eats directly off the ground. Such a practice of venturing to the beach, finding suitably sized seashells, and then modifying them to be perfectly rounded far outweighs any potential illnesses that they could contract. Especially considering the fact that their entire “eating area” has similar, virtually sterile, polished stones lining the floors. In the unlikely event that they did catch a sickness, they would soon build immunities to such pathogens anyway.”-----

 

[ObeyBunny]

Make a list of the kinds of opinions that your character has. Is your character a dog? How then does he view leashes? Is your character a pot head? How then does he view crime rates?

 

[ObeyBunny]

Do some Positive Feedback to yourself:
Never say phrases like “This paper will be tough, but I’ll somehow manage” Wording like that holds the seed of doubt with phrases like “This paper will be tough.” You’re just giving your subconscious an excuse to fail.

Instead, rephrase every thought into things like this: “This paper will be a blast to write” or “This subject is easy as pie.”

Don’t let your internal monolog include words like “won’t, can’t, isn’t, shouldn’t, doesn’t, hasn’t” even if you are saying things like “This won’t be a problem.”

Also, try listing 15 absolutely true things that you have strong memories of (Example: I like grape-coolaid, I took the bus this morning, my father bought me these clothes) and then say “I have the answer” or “My paper is good” even if you haven’t written anything yet.

 

[ObeyBunny]

Here’s a writing prompt:
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• Make a list of 6 objects that have nothing to do with one another (Example: computers, bullet lists, bubbles, cats, ink pens, waste length hair, orange tree, hammers, tooth decay, newspapers, woven patterns in cloth)
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• List the objects by number (Example: 1# computers, 2# bullet list, etc.)
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• Now, place each item in the correct blank in the following sentences
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• “This is a story about a _4#_ in a struggle to avoid death. The story takes place from within a _#6_, with the main character in constant opposition against a _5#_. The time line of the story is no longer than the time it takes for a _2#_ to outlive its usefulness. The story begins with a close relative of _4#_ deciding to become a _3_, but that relative is killed in the process. The story climaxes with _4#_ using a _1#_ to outwit _5#_. Recovering scrambled or destroyed data is a major part of the first act”
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• Do you think you could write this story?

 

[ObeyBunny]

Pick a number between one and ten. Now pick a second number. And a third.
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1. Your character is blind
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2. Your character is too weak to move from his/her current position
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3. Your character has memory loss and knows nothing about himself/herself and does not speak any language (but he/she does know how he feels about things.)
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4. Your character is somehow prevented from going outside of any of these 4 different places.
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5. Your character has a very limited diet and ends up starving in a land of plenty
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6. Your character is a sprite, a spirit, a demon, an angle, or an alien who looses his/her abilities and becomes human for a period of two months
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7. Your character is the only member (species) of his kind.
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8. Your character is with a group of 10 others
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9. Your character is given the chance to transform his/her clan (tribe) into a mighty empire
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10. Your character changes shape into whatever living thing he eats

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Now, Write a scene or a story.

(You must write something no matter how the qualifications compound. I specifically took the idea of a character who is blind, too weak to move, and has memory loss from an excellent story I found online many years ago. The story begins with the character “Floating freely in space, lifting one weak arm and feeling his body- and finding that it has been truncated [surgically hacked down]” The story goes on to say that he is a pet in a store [he knows because he can hear others of his kind “mewling”] and he is taken home by a woman who teaches him language by holding up objects for him to feel and saying the name of that object.)