I look at the plot as a A to B roadmap. Subplots are where you decide to go to on that A to B trip, but occasionally we make a wrong turn and can't seem to get back on the road to that destination we'd like to visit (y'know the one, that place that does those nice curtains your other half wants to get for the living room). The best advice is to scribble down those subplots, and then scribble down where you are now, and look for a link - no matter how remote it may be - you'll soon have those curtains.
When i get writers block i usually go out with friends and have a good tme, be it going to a party or simply shooting some hoops. I also enjoy listening to music while i write, i simply put my ipod on shuffle and write to my hearts content. Before i write however i tend to try and create a mental map in my head, i look at where i want the characters to begin, how i want them to change or grow, and the final outcome. I do the same with a general plot line and then i just let it grow. Hope this helps!
Whether writer's block is a choice or not, it is something a lot of people face. I'm one of those persons. And in one way, it's definitely not a decision of mine to be mentally stumped. I don't write at times because I want to write perfectly. I want whatever I write to be good, not crappy. That mentality is what's my main problem. But, through much support from my mom, I am slowly overcoming the struggle. Somedays I will come up with great ideas, and I'll write some good stuff down. Other days, my writing is dry. But I know that I just need to take it one step at a time. (I really can't do anything else anyway except bang my head against the wall). And with confidance, I'll get there. Time is just the problem.
We can all relate to that awful feeling when you know you have so much to say but words fall short and a concept just will not make itself clear. People say don't force it and just don't write but thats like keeping food in a fridge past expiration date and it feels like your thoughts are rotting. I can only speak for myself but try just writing short snips of nothingness. Open up a book or webpage and find a phrase or word you haven't used in a while and write a paragraph about it. I call it oiling up, letting my thoughts and mental dictionary loosen up to flow better. Starting over is always a fool proof plan too. You may be looking at it from the wrong direction and backed yourself into a corner, so get out! GOOD LUCK
Hi, I've recently had a major busy time in my life and didn't have as much time for writing as I would have liked. Now that I have time for writing again I find that I've lost my writing mojo. Or, more than likely, I've got writers block. My brain just won't function like it has been doing. I've tried a few exercises to get the juices flowing again but they're not working. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get my mojo back? Thanks
Read. Dig out a decent book, read it, see if it inspires you. If not, read a different book. Other than that, just go for walks, try to do things not writer-y. Often I find that just watching TV, playing X-Box, or whatever, clears my mind, and inspiration strikes me when I'm not looking for it. Like trying to find your car keys.
Yes I agree with Banzai. Just forget about writing for a bit, and go out with your friends, and have fun. By being with your friends, the things you do with them, can even inspire you to write similar moments on your´res book story. You´ll see. I´ve also been busy this weekend and wrote absolutely nothing, and i´m still a bit "without ideas". I also think sometimes people adress it as "writer´s block", when sometimes "at least in my case" it´s actually about a bit of lazyness, to just sit and write and then review. Even though I love reading/writing, If I stop doing it for 1/2 or more days, I always feel that lazyness, on getting back with it again.
Maybe writing just isn't that important to you. Other things are higher on your priority list. Examine your priorities.
Well it was my best friends wedding so that is very very important to me. Writing is also very important to me and I feel perturbed that you would think it isn't. Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll give them a try and see what happens.
Try to expand your mind. Determine what makes it kick... I usually just let my mind keep talking and just speak what it's saying to me. If I have an opinion on something, I'll think about it... and just say the words. If I'm feeling something, I just talk outloud to myself about it and find something appealing to me. I believe that's what a true poetic mind is...
If writing is one of your main priorities, and important to you (contrary to what has been suggested), then do not worry about a thing, it will come back; we all experience at one time or another something along those lines. Just don't try to force it, and let it come back naturally. Do what has been suggested by Banzai, Zane and JessaNova.
Get a map of the world. Cover your eyes and put your finger down on it, thus selecting a country at random. Read the Wikipedia entry about that country. Then read a random poem by John Donne or Emily Dickinson. Quickly write down the first sentence that comes into your head. Read this sentence ten times. Then put it through the paper shredder and forget about it. Write about anything - ANYTHING - but that!
Do anything other than writing, as the other members have suggested here. And personally, I play video games and inspiration for a scene might hit me when I'm chasing down terrorists or leading the police on a high speed chase. My writing mojo often comes back gradually after maybe a day or two.
Try listening to some soothing music. That seems to help me unwind my writing nerves. Also try to find some writing prompts on the internet. They're a quick way to jumpstart your brain into writing mode again.
When this happen to me I just try to write whatever, not in particular a project I'd want to make at the time. Then it picks up the speed for me to move onto something cooler or more important. Also inspiration helps. I read a lot of books, comic books, watch movies, listen to music, travel, etc. I really feel sorry for you in a good way and hope you'll get back to doing what feels good for you.
Huh. For me, I can't go from reading or web surfing straight to a cold story. Or, well, I can, but I prefer not. I would wait until I've been doing something else for a while, and am alert but not in a book-reading mood. (Writing early in the morning or soon after work helps; writing after a nap also works.) Then I re-read what I have. If I remember where I wanted to go, fine. I start writing. If I don't remember -- and this happens pretty often, as I tend to come up with new ideas while still working on my other project, so I jot down a couple paragraphs and then finish my first story -- I sit back and think about it. I don't let myself leave the computer or the writing booklet for ten or fifteen minutes. This is an actual example: "Okay, I wrote a paragraph about a guy with a spirit attached to his soul. He's a soldier, and he is being pursued by the enemy, and he expects to die soon. I know a prophecy was involved somewhere." *Thinks* "Yeah, no, I have no idea what the heck I was going to do with that. But! What if the soldiers are from a society where prophecy is used all the time, so you could find out when each soldier was going to die, and could take some of the long-lived-ones and use them as messengers or spies because you knew they would survive?" New story. Different take on the idea I originally had -- I still don't know what it was, but that wasn't it -- but I can still turn it into a neat tale or two, send it off to F&SF or Daily Science Fiction and see if they bite. Remember, if you can come up with any kind of useful, coherent plot you will enjoy writing, even if you've lost the original spark, you can finish the story and come up with a good product. And even if it never ends up quite as good as the "uninterrupted original version" might have been, it is good practice both in terms of simple writing, and good practice for showing any nagging doubts that you can beat writer's block when you have to.
Plot Block... or not? Right, so I've got the basic concept for the story, i.e., I know what I want to write, but I can't seem to pull my ideas into a proper plot. They're muddled about in my head, and don't seem to come together. Every time I begin on a new idea, it ends up being thrown away. This is Plot Block, isn't it? Does anybody have any ideas about getting by this?
I actually think you are in the right path idea-writing it down-idea-writing it down-..... just don't throw away all those ideas, have a look at them again tomorrow or the day after, an abandoned idea might just give you the spark for your perfect plot. If you are still not getting the illusive perfect plot, take a hard look at the storyline ('basic concept of the story') again and ask HOW, WHAT, WHY etc etc repeatedly whenever you get a chance to do so as you go through your storyline.... the answers should give you more ideas for plots. To experience writers plots come easily as soon as they think about a storyline, but to reach that level they went through the same thing as you do, so don't be so hard on yourself. As I said, you are in the right path.
I find the easiest way to get over plot-block is to do it visually. I start by getting a huge piece of paper & jot down any ideas that come into my head. Then I ask myself what my aim is; why am I writing the book / what do I want readers & my characters to learn. Asking these questions helps me to generate more ideas, & I can then think about what needs to happen in the book, in order for my characters / readers to learn these things. This gives me my important scenes, which I then write down on post-it notes & arrange into some sort of basic time order. After that I put these scenes in a graph, which helps me to see what scenes are missing / what else needs to happen. I find looking at things like graphs and post-it notes a lot easier because I can actually see a sort of structure to the book, rather than reading over a pile of notes. The best way to get over plot-block though is to just not give up. Work on the idea everyday, even if it's only for a few minutes. Eventually something will click into place.
I suspect "writer's block" is one of those terms everybody attaches different meanings to, so they keep talking past each other. I tend to revise and improve my work until I feel sick of it and can't stand writing another word. That creates a mental block which is hard to overcome. Sure, with willpower I can just force myself to continue writing, but willpower is not infinite. Sooner or later one has to come up with a way to write that one feels good about, or one's mental block becomes stronger than one's willpower. I do not believe this is the same thing as laziness. As I understand the word, laziness is a simple choice to avoid exertion. If something that is normally easy requires enormous amounts of exertion for one, the problem is not that one wants to avoid it, but that it requires so much exertion in the first place. One's doing it the wrong way. I believe "writer's block" is used as a rationalisation for not writing, but not necessarily because people are lazy. It can just as well be because they don't understand why they can't write. For example, a writer may have trouble writing dialogue, or their plot is fuzzy and inconsistent, but the writer doesn't realise it. They just know things turn out wrong as soon as they sit down to write. They try to write again and again, and it keeps turning out wrong, for a reason they don't understand. Since humans learn from experience, this creates an aversion against writing, and in order to explain this aversion, the writer labels it "writer's block". In these cases, I think the writer may need help to identify what they're not satisfied with in their writing, so they can learn the proper techniques. As others have pointed out, the best way is probably to keep writing without worrying too much about quality, because how else are you going to identify the weak parts?
In my opinion you can try to rewrite your whole story. If you have your story in word for example, try printing it all out and rewrite it into word again. This way you change the story and add little bits as you continue. I have found that writers block is my own brain telling me that the story is 'incorrect' and might have to change for me to continue writing. I do agree with some others on this forum though that say a great writer should only write because he 'needs' to, its like breathing . But it does not mean that we only have great writers in the world. We have good ones, and just ok writers too. I only write because I like to, I do not feel a need to place my words online for all to read. I wouldnt go into a nervous meltdown if I stopped writing. I just do it because I like to. Anyway good luck with all your endevours and hope you have ditched the horrible writers disease.
Hello, I haven't one the forums in awhile, I have been busy writing so just to refresh, I have been working on a space opera that I first came up with 10 years ago. I have been spending the last several months planning mainly the details and I am just about at the point where I was going to start writing. I was talking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. This friend has been writing poems and short stories since he was young and I thought he might be able to give me some helpful suggestions or advice. I was going over my story with him, my main character and the general plot. When he finished, he looked at me and said, "Have you ever heard of Mass Effect?" I had not heard of it. It turns out; Mass Effect is an RPG video game for the PC and X-Box 360. My friend told that my story and plot sounded very, very similar to the storyline of the game. Now I have an X-Box 360 in my back room for sports games so I went out the very next day and purchased both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I have now beat Mass Effect and am about half way or more through Mass Effect 2 and I have to say that I am now very frustrated. If I were to describe to you what the story line of Mass Effect was about in one sentence or even one paragraph and then do the same for my story, you would be hard pressed to find a difference. Basically both are about a futuristic earth/human society who has joined the larger intergalactic community. The main of both centers around a now extinct highly advanced civilization that was whipped out under mysterious circumstances leaving behind only ruins and sparse artifacts which are being studied by scientist to learn more about them and their technology. Then also in both stories, what ever whipped out this advanced race are now happening again and the story centers around the main character and his team trying to find out what is happening and stop it before it is too late. Besides just the plot, a lot of the details I came up with are similar. In both stories, Earth has become a more of a planet wide government with colonies spread through out the Galaxy. The name I gave to this planet wide government is very similar to the name given in Mass Effect and also the counsel (kind of link the United Nations for the galactic races) is very similar. I was trying to write an scientifically plausible space opera and from researching Mass Effect, I know that they were trying to create a scientifically plausible Space RPG. So surely if we are trying to base future technology off of what is currently known, some things are bound be similar. If it were just a few things that matched, I probably would be too concerned but it is just so close. The only real differences in my story and Mass Effect, are the main character, his back ground (although both characters are Military or former Military) and the way Earth and humans see them selves in both stories and where they got this advanced technology to allow them travel to other solar systems. In Mass Effect, Humans discovered ruins of the ancient extent civilization on the south pole of Mars which they studied and got the technology from, then discovered that Charon, Pluto's moon was not a moon but in fact a giant relay station which allowed them to quickly travel to another star system. In my story, aliens have been visiting earth for thousands of years, some friendly, some not. Humanity managed to befriend one race and set up trade and exchange with them. This Alien race shared its Technology with us and bought us into the galactic community. In Mass Effect, humans are a people on the rise. They hold great favor with the galactic counsel and a lot of other people resent them for this fact but technology wise are the equals of everyone else in the Galaxy. In my story, humans are NOT the equals of everyone. We are the new comers and are probably the least technologically advanced of the space faring civilizations. The Alien race who did share technology with use, didn't tell use everything or share ALL of their technology because of that fact, in my story, Humans are not that well respected in the Galactic community. They are also very timid , afraid they are going to tick off one of the more advanced races. The alien race who shared its technology with humans is seen as kind of our big brother, our protectors. Before my story took place, the back story is humans got rapped up in a brutal war with a very aggressive advanced race and were losing very badly. These "big brothers stepped in and beat the aggressive race back defending earth. Because of that most alien races in my story look at humans like "with out them you are nothing" kind of attitude. The other difference is the technology used to travel to other stars, my stories does not use giant relay stations. Those appear to be the only differences however. I am just really frustrated because I would have to change so much of my story to make it different from Mass Effect that if I did, it wouldn't even be the same story anymore. What do you guys think? Should I even bother at this point? Any advice or guidance would be appreciated. And I apologize for any punctuation and spelling errors, I had a lot to say and not so long to say it.
