Stuck in the midst of your story?

Writer's block can hover over your shoulder, silent and deadly, until the weak moment in your manuscript when BAM! it can hit. But I've been paying attention to when mine decides to strike, and I've found that it is typically caused by a few major villains. Knock out those villains, and you might just avoid a blockage all-together.

Let's look at some of the top block-causers:

Fuzzy Characters:

Especially in the beginning of your novel, if you can't clearly picture your characters, you can't write them. If you don't know their personalities, it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to write from inside their heads or anticipate how they will react to things. Writing a simple conversation or scene can take hours, and feel awkward and wrong. 

The Solution: Find a muse. Look at people in your life, your relatives, coworkers, and friends. Can you base your difficult characters on any of them? Or maybe a character on television, one you "know" well enough to anticipate their reactions, feelings, and personality. Often my characters are a combination of people I know and celebrities, tv characters and famous figures. 

Unknown Plots:

If you don't know where you want your book to head next, it can make it impossible to 'write in the dark'. You don't know if you should be introducing a new character, or starting a conversation, or writing a scene a triggers a chain of events. 

The Solution: If I get stuck, I try to roughly outline the next chunk of my book, or I draw a storyline arc and try to decide where my current place in the novel falls on it. Sometimes that arc helps me to realize that I should be approaching the story's climax, and need to start moving in that direction. If you are making up the story as you go and have no idea what is ahead, try doing a 'what if' exercise. I touch on this in my How to Write a Novel course - here's a video that describes the What If process, and how it works: 

Another Solution: If you are 'pantsing' your novel (writing without an outline) you may have written yourself into a corner. Back up a scene or two, and try rewriting those scenes and ending them differently, moving your novel in a fresh direction. Often that new direction will take off and you'll be rocking and rolling again. 

Need help writing, publishing, or marketing your novel? Check out my online courses here. 

Full Transcript:

Let's talk about one of my absolute favorite processes in writing, and that is the "what if" process. I read about this a couple of years ago, I don't even know where and using it has really changed everything in my writing and in my stories and is the number one place I go, if I ever get stuck or have writer's block. And that is called the what if exercise, and we're going to do it right now. Grab a blank note pad or a blank piece of paper and a pen, and take a look at your outline. Read it over, just sort of take yourself through the story. And now, we're going to take a couple minutes and ask ourselves what if? And when we ask ourselves, what if, just throw away any thoughts of reason or possibilities... possibilities isn't the right word, but accuracy or authentibility, authentibility, that's not a word.

Forget whether this is an actual possibility. Just ask yourself what if, an open up anything in the world as an answer. So looking at our Cinderella and Prince charming story, let's go through the exercise with that and ask ourselves what if. What if, and now I just let my mind go. What if Cinderella was actually a serial killer in her spare time and what would happen? You know, so that's why I got to write down. What if Cinderella was actually a serial killer? What if Prince charming falls in love with one of Cinderella's evil stepsisters instead of her? What if Cinderella is actually the evil sister and we're seeing the whole story from her point of view? What if Cinderella is never in love with Prince charming and he's doggedly pursuing her and she does not want his attention to whatsoever?

What if this book is love triangle and Cinderella is in love with Prince charming and another man and she's two-timing the two of them and torn between them? What if Cinderella is not able to leave the ball by midnight and her dress and her carriage and everything disappears and every one of the balls sees who she really is? So just ask yourself anything, like throw out any possibility. Doesn't matter if it is realistic or not, throw it out there. This will start up your mind; get your creative juices flowing. It could cause the breakthrough that changes your whole story. I use this all the time. I use it in the outlining process and a lot of times it has caused just one random thought when I just opened up any possibility has changed my entire book in the past. So, it could really make a huge difference, and right now it's time to ask yourself, not halfway through the book.

Well, you want to ask yourself them too, but it's important that you ask yourself this right now because you want to get these great ideas now in the outline stage where you can move scenes around and see if that would actually work, because it might not work. So ask yourself these questions now. Also later on while writing the book, feel free to do the same exercise. Anytime you get stuck, you can do it on a much smaller level. We don't have to talk about whether Cinderella is a serial killer. We can just... if we're struggling with the scene where Cinderella is sitting at home, thinking about Prince charming, let's ask a few what ifs. What if her evil step sister comes in and has a heart to heart with her? What if she gets sick, you know? And that's a bad example.

You're going to get some bad ideas; this process, not everything is the gold gem, but you know, what if Cinderella decides to run away in this scene? You know, like use it on a small level and a big level, but those two words, "what if" can be the most powerful words in this entire process? And I love them. I love doing this exercise and I hope it's really fun for you. And I hope it stirs up some great ideas. And even if it doesn't, it's just a great exercise to get your mind thinking creatively and outside the box and looking at your story in a different way. And that's another, like, what if we wrote the entire book from the evil step sisters point of views and cause the reader to love them and be reading against Cinderella and Prince charming the whole time.

What if we never used Prince Charming and Cinderella's point of view and only use the outside forces, you know, outside characters and their point of views? So there's just a lot of different ways to look at your story, and this exercise is a great way to bring those ways out and to really get the gears of your story and of your mind moving and turning. So I won't talk anymore, let's dive into this exercise now. Grab a blank piece of paper or a notepad and a pen, ask yourself what if and just let your mind go crazy. It doesn't matter if these are terrible ideas, just write them all down and see what comes out.