Many people suffer from not being able to write. We have the ideas, we have the characters playing around in our heads, we can see in our mind where we want the book to go. And yet we open up the document and we can’t get the words out. Writer’s block can be caused by any number of reasons. Some of the most common ones are that we don’t have enough information about the story, we don’t know how to move forward specifically from the scene we are in, or we are having some kind of mental block (be it imposter syndrome, doom & gloom, anxiety, etc.).
This will be a series, reviewing some exercises that will help you improve your craft and help get past that block. In this first part, we’ll be covering exercises relating to not having enough information about our story.
First and foremost, we need to figure out WHY we are blocked. And this is clearly more complicated than can be addressed in a single blog post (or even in a series), so for now I’m sticking to the basics. But stay tuned if you are interested in working with me on figuring out your block and getting past it!
Journal / Free-Write
This is a great place to start if you aren’t sure why you are blocked. Also known as stream of consciousness, with free-writing or journaling, you simply write whatever you are thinking! It doesn’t have to make sense or be related to your project, and it should be completely unfiltered and uncensored. Make sure you can do this in a safe place, knowing it is meant for your eyes alone – that way you can be more authentic.
This can be an extremely difficult thing to do. We filter constantly. Some times I have difficulties taking my thoughts (which are more like vibes) and applying actual words to them that I can then translate to the page. It feels forced, awkward, and filtered. But just keep going. Do your best to avoid judging the thoughts, or course-correcting them. Just write. Ask yourself how you feel about writing, why you want to write, why this project specifically, and what you think is blocking you from getting it done. Answer the questions as honestly as you can, without judgement, without tying any specific emotion to it. There is no right or wrong answer, there is only the truth. And once you uncover your truth (which in my experience can be buried VERY deep) you can move forward.
From here, you hopefully can get a sense of your WHY, and can leap into one of the exercises under that category, or you can continue to free-write to help move yourself forward with whatever the issue might be.
More Information Required:
This first post will discuss exercises aimed towards finding more information. Tara Mokhtari, in The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing, says there is no such thing as writer’s block, it simply means you aren’t prepared enough. (More on that in a later update). But for now, assuming we accept this premise (or we’ve discovered that we are stuck because we don’t know enough about the world, characters, or plot), that means we need more information to move forward.
Research (and take notes about) real life examples of an important aspect of your story (religion, politics, social structures, art).
I took an Art History course, and it opened my eyes to how art has been used to offer insights into the human mind. It can show what the culture valued, how they expressed themselves, what they thought was “ideal beauty”, it spoke of religion and power. One of the biggest world-building pieces in my current WIP is religion – it’s central to the plot, so I needed to understand it completely. I wrote the origin story so that I could follow its progression to current day and make sure my characters’ actions and thoughts and beliefs made sense. Art became a part of that after researching and seeing how it was used by historical cultures.
You can just write questions you have as you research (for example, what religious holidays do my characters celebrate? What are some cultural taboos?) or you can start jotting down ideas. The goal here isn’t to figure everything out – it’s a starting point to get you thinking. Look up pictures of a building style that your world might have, look at clothes that you think they would wear, think about the differences in social classes and how that influences your characters. Write down anything that comes to mind.
Write every question you can think of relating to your story; the setting, the characters, the plot.
We know we don’t have enough information, so the next step is figure out what it is we don’t know. Don’t worry about answering the questions right now, just simply put the question down. If you have answers, write down every answer (or every POSSIBLE answer) that you can think of. My notes from these types of exercises usually have bullet points, with a lot of question marks. I’ll have the initial question, several possible answers, more questions that present themselves with each possible answer, and so on. Eventually, one of them “clicks” and I use the strike-through format to ignore the others.
Pro Tip: Never delete your notes! You can move the ‘confirmed’ aspects of your story into a different document, but you never know when those old questions and possible answers might come in handy for something else later on.
Read your old notes
This can be extremely helpful, especially if it’s been a while since you’ve delved those dusty tomes. Go back through your mind-mapping, look at old versions of your outline, look at old questions you asked yourself. Things may have changed a lot since then, but perhaps there was a piece you forgot to bring forward that gives you an answer. Or reading it gives you inspiration for a new take on it. (and this, folks, is one of the biggest reasons we never throw out our work!)
Read your other plot/character/setting ideas
Same as the above; reading unassigned ideas - ideas that you have had, but haven’t committed them to any specific project yet, and which you should be keeping track of somehow (check out this post for some organization tips) – can be another great way to glean inspiration. For example, one of the character ideas you had might help flesh out one of your flatter characters, or one idea might inspire something else.
Bonus: combine either of these with free-writing! Read an old note/idea, and just start writing down anything you think of.
Use a Writing Prompt or Writing Exercise
Many writing prompts are aimed more towards writing new things, but there is no rule that says you can’t stick your characters into them and see how it goes! I’ve been doing this a lot with school; The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing has a lot of awesome exercises in it, and you can insert your project into them most of the time. You can use these to dive deeper into your character; what would they do if confronted with this situation? You can use them to further define your setting, or even answer some questions in your plot.
Write some slice-of-life or fluff scenes with your characters, write their backstory (defining moments that took place before the book starts), write some short stories where they get up to shenanigans outside of the plot, either in the future (after the book ends) or the past (before the book starts) or even during the events of the book (especially fun for side characters that we don’t get to see much/anything from their point of view). Who knows, those stories could become a collection that you release later as a companion to your project. Just remember to stay true to your characters and your world; if you write something and realize this character wouldn’t do that or the plot of the exercise doesn’t vibe with the world you want, make sure you note that or rewrite it so it’s more accurate!
Do Nothing
This can be used with some of the other exercises, but basically the idea here is to remove external stimuli. Allow your brain to reset and work through the problem. This can be especially useful after a free-writing session or after reading your old notes. Don’t listen to anything, don’t watch anything. Pace around the house, go for a walk outside, exercise, do low-brain effort chores or tasks, meditate. Let your mind wander, let the thoughts and spirals fizzle out (don’t feed them!), and let your subconscious work on the issue at hand.
Being ‘bored’ is one of the most powerful tools for creativity. Our brain naturally wants stimulation, which is why scrolling through videos or posts on social media feels so good in the moment. It’s feeding into our brain’s natural dopamine cycle and essentially hijacking it. Our imagination doesn’t have to do much (if any) work, and while it can sometimes be nice to turn our brains “off” in this way, and can certainly help fill the well, if overdone, it can be severely inhibiting to the creative process. So, go be bored. Let your brain entertain itself; ask it some questions or daydream about your characters. Watch them in your mind’s eye. Envision the setting. Listen to their dialogue, feel their feelings. Like what you ‘see’? Write it down!
Ultimately, the best way to find the information we are missing is to write about it (there’s a reason the suggestion of “Just Write” is so commonly given to those struggling with a block). Write the wrong answers until the right one emerges. Expunge the “noise” from our brains by free-writing or doing nothing so that we can focus on our project. Do research and take notes about topics that might be relevant (or might provide us with a clue to solving a problem we didn’t fully understand). Read back over our old work to glean inspiration.
Writing blocks are extremely frustrating, and even more so when you don’t know exactly why you are blocked. Did this post help you? If not, let me know in the comments what type of block you think you have (even if it’s not listed in my intro!) and I will work to include it in this series.
The “Write down every question you can think of” part reminded me of being at Viable Paradise and Steven Gould gave me so many questions to ask of my YA novel Aftershock (now titled Apostate). It was so overwhelming. I don’t know if my brain was ready for it lol. Like worldbuilding questions are important, but maybe I had given myself a world that was a bit beyond my abilities.