Writer's block · 3:35pm Jun 7th, 2016
I just wrote this on a thread and decided to post it here. [Then of course I got OCD and expanded it. 
]
What I mean by "writer's block" is when someone stares at the paper / screen & can't think of what happens next. This should never happen.
If you're ever reduced down to just one interesting thing that could happen next, it means you've written your story onto train tracks, and your story is now boring, because only one interesting thing could happen next.
If you're down to zero interesting things, that means you didn't stop when you had just one interesting thing. You need to back up at least to the last point where you had to choose betweentwo interesting things that could happen next, because everything after that point is no good.
But even focusing on what happens next is weird. Why are you staring at the last word on your page? What about the setting of scene two--should it move to a different location to symbolize progress from scene one? Is the level of omniscience you gave Pinkie Pie in scene 3 inconsistent with her puzzlement in scene 1? If your story isn't finished and you don't still have a dozen different issues to reconsider, something has gone wrong. Either your story is too simple, or you're an incomparable genius, or you're not being demanding enough. Stories don't drip out of the pen in an ordered, final state. It just can't happen that you're stuck on the last word you wrote, yet have no questions about anything that came before or will come after it. There should always be problems throughout the story all shouting for your attention. The particular point in the story where you last stopped writing should not be so prominent in your mind.
Why are you writing the story from start to finish? Seriously--why would anybody do that? Do you not know how it's going to end? That means you're not writing a story, because you don't yet have a story idea. A scenario is not a story. If you don't know which direction to go in because you don't know where you're going, I don't think we should dignify that with the term "writer's block", as if it were an aberration rather than exactly what you'd expect to happen.
The normal state of writing is not staring at the last word on the paper and wondering what could happen next, but thinking about the entire story, the entire set of possible stories, characters, and events you considered while writing it, and choosing where to strike next, what to change, and which alternative to use, to hammer the thing into one unified story. The normal state is to have too many possibilities, not too few.
For instance, I'm in the middle of writing a terrible crack-fic based on the last episode, on the question, "What is Fluttershy's job?", which I'm tentatively calling Breaking Not Very Nice. I considered two overall stories, one that stays light-hearted, and one that goes very dark. What appeals to me about the dark story is that it explains Fluttershy's shyness as fear of bad things happening to anyone she makes friends with, and that gave it some depth in addition to comedy. What I don't like about it is that (a) it involves carnivores picking blue feathers out of their teeth, and that's not good for popularity, and (b) it's psychologically implausible, because Fluttershy has shown mostly fears that can't be interpreted as fear for the safety of her friends, and doesn't act like someone who is afraid of hurting others.
Notice that both of these are "Fluttershy is Walter White" stories, but I did not call "Fluttershy is Walter White" a story. That's not a story idea; it's a writing prompt. I can't write anything that I have any chance of keeping unless I know how the story ends, and what attitude / tone it takes along the way.
Going with the light-hearted story, I have 7 short scenes that need to take place. I can work on them in any order. So far I've written scenes 2, 6, and 1, in that order, because those are the longest scenes, and it's easier to start with scenes that have some meat to them. I have a lot of issues up in the air: How much should Fluttershy know about what's going on? How much humor do I get from her being oblivious versus being sweetly nefarious? Same question for Spike. Should Twilight appear in the scene related to her interests, or should Spike stand in for her? Have I got too many ponies in scene 1? I have a weak transition marked in the middle of scene 1, around a joke that doesn't really work. Can I punch it up and make it funnier, or rip it out? Can I substitute a similar joke? Can I delete the entire opening and so not need that transition? Is scene 6 too long--it should be picking up steam as we head into the final scene, not dragging out its joke. How can I reconcile Applejack being a member of an Earth Pony supremacist militia with her canon character? Maybe I can make her a radical libertarian instead. Maybe she's part of a movement with both these elements in it, and I can relate that to the difficulties of how real-life liberal movements often get hijacked by extremists. Maybe that's way too much to take on in scene 6 of a crack-fic. Etc.
My point is that even though this is a very short story, I could easily reel off twenty issues in the first 2,000 words demanding my attention. If I were stuck, I'd start working on these 20 issues, and I guarantee that at least one of them would open up a path forward where I was stuck. To get writer's block, first I'd have to resolve all these issues to my satisfaction, and that never happens.
There are always dozens of issues that could go another way in a story, even when it's "done". If you're staring at the screen and don't have even one issue demanding your attention, something went badly wrong long before you got to that point.
Most likely, the problem is either
(A) you don't know how the story ends, or
(B) you've eliminated tension by closing off too many possibilities earlier in the story, or
(C) you haven't got enough awareness of craft, technical issues, and how life works to detect the problems in what you've already written, and to focus your attention on what the unwritten sections of the story need to accomplish and to avoid.
Actually, I don't know about others but for me the problem is usually
(D) You know
exactlygenerally what you need to write; you just don't want to write it because that takes focus and work.FYI, there's a story called Flash Fog with that theme. I haven't read all of it, but it starts good.
Backing up helps. Having more than one thing to work on helps too, when you've just hit that wall of "I don't feel like working on this right now".
It may not make any sense, but I really think you should call that story Breaking Peeved. :V
Quite easily, I'd wager V:
4006247
Yes! Thank you.
She doesn't need one. Back in season one she was a model. One of her contracts was to be the image for a brand of juice, which became insanely popular. She still gets large checks.
4006274 well I'm glad that even after all the seasons, that question is steel resolved.
It's a steel/still pun. You should laugh. Ha ha ha
Actually I would suggest the opposite. If you are at an impasse in your story and do not know where to take it -- take a longer view and stop writing the current chapter, but write the chapter 2 ahead of the one you are trying to write. If you can't do that, then your problem isn't with your plot, it is with your characters.
Once you successfully write what your characters will be doing, then you can connect from where they were to where they will be.
---
For long-form stories, I suggest to not simply have one ending, but at least three. You should always have exit ramps available within 3 or 4 chapters for if you get tired of writing a story or it starts to become staid. Knowing only a single ending for your story that will happen 25 chapters in the future is a problem that can create the situation you already brought up. If you have a ramp at 3 chapters ahead of you, 7 chapters ahead of you, and 25 chapters ahead then not only do you know the plot of your story better, but you have branch points that keep the story interesting.
Because I know it's possible for a story to evolve during the creative process, and I see it as a waste of effort to write the climax when it could very easily end up being completely different.
or,
Because quite often the story is so short that there isn't a functional point to writing it out of order.
or,
I'm writing stream of consciousness.
or,
I want to make sure that the scenes flow as naturally as possible from one to the next, so I follow the characters as they move through the events of the story.
Other than that, decent advice.
4006308
I've always written:
Straight through from first word to last, but then I never start writing at all till I know in rough terms the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever I'm doing. I'm just a linear guy, I guess.
I also start rewriting almost immediately. Each writing session begins with me revising the stuff I've already written--right from the first word if it's a short story or back three or four pages if it's something longer. I feel that helps me avoid writer's block 'cause I've already got my steam up by the time I get to the place where I finished, and my fingers can just keep typing.
Mike
4006308 You forgot my excuse: I'm so disorganized that I *know* generally how this beast starts and ends, but I can't write an outline to save my soul because as soon as I start outlining, I write dialogue bits and stage movements and expand on parts until I look back and darnit! I wrote it from start to end just like I normally do.
Exceptions in my chaotic process exist. The One Who Got Away was *very* roughly outlined before I started. Trixie's Pet Changeling was *fully* outlined (for a given value of 'fully') before I started (and I saved the outline so when I'm done I can go back and look at my process to see what needs work, other than everything.) It's a big step back from when I wrote Monster and Tutor, which both were written in one fairly long stream with no written framework (I had it in my head, if that counts). I credit you guys (Bad Horse and associated minions) for any improvement in my writing ability due to technique and practice over the last few years.
4006247 "...Having more than one thing to work on helps too,.." If I have more than twelve, does that count as being really productive or just crazy?
4006232
This. Or maybe you fiddle endlessly with a story, always feeling like it won't be up to par. I know writing actually became much harder for me personally when people started reading and praising my work; suddenly, it felt like there was all this pressure to actually write something worth reading. Before that it was just "that random story on fimfiction that nobody knows about, so who cares."
In contrast to what you've written here, Bad Horse, the two most common bits of advice on breaking writer's block that I've heard from professional writers are:
1. Write anyway. Even if it means forcing yourself to sit in a chair and stare at the screen, or working on a different part of the story, or working on a different story entirely for a while. Don't let yourself lose your momentum.
2. Lower your standards. One author I knew said that writer's block is always at some level a byproduct of having too high a standard for yourself, and even writing trash is better than writing nothing at all. The result may not be as bad you think, and you can always go back and rewrite it later.
Basically, the advice for getting yourself out of a rut that I've most commonly received is just to write yourself out of it.
Still, there's probably a lot of reasons why people experience writer's block, and I agree that planning a story out ahead of time is something that most (though not all) authors would benefit extremely from, whether they have writer's block or not. ~ Sable
Yes, I do think writer's block comes from how you approach and think about your story, and your general thought process, which your writing process will reflect. I can't say for sure though because somehow I've never had it.
I also wonder if people all mean the same thing by "writer's block". For example, I could see a writer meaning "not sure which option to pick out of many" instead of "no options to pick". I could also see a writer calling any immediately unanswered, important question as a "block", if they think good or successful writing means easy writing, or no questions requiring pause.
EDIT: Also, due to the "for fun" nature of fanfiction, most authors probably do begin with just a scenario and move ahead with little direction, thus why writer's block as mind blankness is such a common occurrence. I could be wrong, of course. It would be interesting to find out somehow.
4006410 Writer's block is a statement with incredibly variable meaning, yes.
I'm completely bullshitting this, but:
It seems to me that this particular sort of "not writer's block" would be common among NatNoWriMo noobs. Can I propose we call it "NatNoer's block"?
4006407
Ehh... that reads to me as essetially what BH is talking about here.
It is worth noting that many authors (Stephen King comes to mind) claim that not only do they never outline, but they never plan their books at all. In the end, it really comes down to how you prefer to write. Outlining has always felt safer to me, but I can understand how free-writing an entire book, then rewriting, then rewriting again, and then editing might feel more organic.
For pantsers (people who don't outline), I think the usual solution to "I don't know what comes next" is to just add a new wrinkle. Have someone kick down the door, or blow up a building. Do something so out of nowhere that it's suddenly fun and interesting to write again. Once the entire story is down in front of you, it's easy to go back and smooth out those pinches, and foreshadow anything that comes out of nowhere.
In my opinion, writer's block pretty much always comes down to motivation, because writing anything is better than not writing at all. Even if you know you're going to throw away whatever you write that day, you're still sorting through your thoughts and becoming a better writer.
Now, editor's block... that sounds a bit more likely. But I hear about far less commonly.
Side note: I don't think telling aspiring writers that they should worry about subtleties in what they've already written before they've finished a story is good advice. Constantly going back and tweaking things is a major cause of writer's block for many people (myself included).
4006308
But I could say the same thing about the start. When you have a story in mind, there's no reason to privilege the start over the ending. Just the opposite: the ending is more important. At this moment I'm rewriting scenes 1 and 2 because I changed the ending.
4006550 Different strokes for different folks. Your way is not the way. Let's agree to disagree. Various other unnecessarily confrontational declarations.
Because it adds a feeling of cohesion to your story that can be lost when you write out of order.
Aragon and I both write sequentially, even though we both have very strong outlines in our heads. I wrote two thousand words of notes of Mare who Once LIved on the Moon before I wrote a single word of chapter one, and do a page of shorthand at the start of every chapter so I can see my own skeleton. But I will almost never break sequence.
If you write in sequence, you have a timeline written out for you, full notes on your own continuity as you've written them, a better sense of your own pacing, a chance to change future elements should the characters tell you a better story in the writing process -- because it's much easier than having to scrap a scene that no longer makes sense, or force it into making sense -- and in my case something that's important is a more useful measurement of your projected length and word count.
It's also easier to have a pre-reader or editor or friend look over half a chapter if it's all from the same half.
There are so many legitimate reasons to write sequentially. When I write out of order, it's never more than three thousand words ahead, and usually to help me work out the best way to bridge two concrete scenes.
Sure, I had my ending set in stone when I started writing 80,000 words ago. But maybe I've found I've been accidentally working towards a better one since then. I have that freedom.
EDIT: This is not to say you shouldn't write out of sequence, dear reader. There's no one right way, and there are also a myriad of advantages to writing out-of-order. This was more to illustrate how outright offensive I found the accusatory tone of this paragraph.
Flutter Brutter is an appropriate starting point for discussing writer's block because in many cases, writers get stuck at the same stage as Zephyr Breeze: fear of failure. I know in my case, I tend to either think the story ideas I have are either bad story ideas (that have been done before in some form or another) or story ideas that are good but I don't feel I have the skill yet to pull off.
I've definitely found writing out of order helps, however. Starting with the most interesting scenes (which are probably most fully formed in my head when planning the story) first helps to guide the writing of the other scenes and helps me determine which parts of the build up to those interesting scenes deserve most focus.
I like to see what the characters will do and how they will progress.
I also leave moving parts up to resolve themselves, because unlike [Redacted], [Redacted], and [Redacted] in Tales, I am not omniscient and cannot see all parts of the full sequence.
But then again, I'm cheating in that Tales is intended to eventually read as a full AU take on the series.
But, there's literally a year and change worth of discussion into specifics outlining certain parts, and I do know what, when, and where my "Setpieces" exist and how to get there.
Most of my current "writer's block", or whenever I experience it, is more neurological constipation; I set everything aside to come to a boil and It hasn't cooked off yet.
I used to have writer's block, until I got writer's termites
I had an experience like the thing you mentioned, being stuck because there's only one way to go. I'd just stare at all the paragraphs I'd already written, and couldn't bring myself to add on to them. I decided to rewrite it from scratch, using the old draft as a loose reference, so it matched how I felt in the presence. new possibilities opened up. maybe they were always there, only now I could see them.
it felt like an "empty your cup" moment.
and of course it would be extreme to suggest doing this to every story (this was a pretty short one so it didn't use up much time). don't take it literally, it's about the spirit. if you're absolutely stuck, try something new. even if it doesn't solve your problem, it might produce something interesting...
I dunno. I've written some nice things just by dumping characters into a premise and watching them run around and do their stuff. I imagine it's how most role playing campaigns are run, too
Because I literally cannot bring myself to do it in any other way.
A must go to B must go to C and so on.
Least in my mind.
~Skeeter The Lurker
4006363
Ditto here. I usually write stories from start to finish, which is unfortunate when I realize that I started the story in the wrong place and have to cut a bunch of words, or even an entire scene because it ultimately proves unnecessary. That said, I almost always outline stories before writing them, especially anything longer than a minific, and even there, I generally run through them in my head at least once before writing.
I also do the "build up steam" thing, which means I've read a lot of my stories a very large number of times.
That said, I do sometimes write starting somewhere else in the story, especially if I'm stuck on the intro to the story. My Flurry Heart story is presently in three pieces as a result, but they will grow together soon. It is a great way to get around a "my brain refuses to work on this right now" issue.
In fact, why am I not working on that right now?
4006402 I don't always outline, but I usually write the most-important parts first, the parts that made me want to write the story.
4006519 Ray Bradbury wrote--at length--that he just started writing at the beginning and found out where the story would go, but he contradicted himself in other interviews by describing several stories where he knew the ending or the middle before he knew the beginning. I think Stephen King wrote that the first thing that came to him in "The Gunslinger" was the opening line, but he also wrote that he knew how The Stand would end early on. CS Lewis wrote that he began with pictures and no story, but some of those pictures entered into the story pretty far along.
I'm tempted to call pure "pantsing" a bad practice. Of course anything that gets a book finished is a good practice, but from what I've seen on fimfic, pure pantsing leads too often to bloated or uncompleted stories for me to consider it as an equal alternative to plotting.
Outlining, even in high detail? Sure, go out of order. That's the beauty of it: you can work top-down, bottom-up, fleshing out the bits that interest you, connecting a scene to this other scene, all while it's in a very low-investment state.
Writing out of order?
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I had a fic outlined where I knew all the major plot points, the character arcs, a few noteworthy scenes, the works. I was writing and publishing the fic one chapter at a time, as is the way in the fanfic world. I reached the point where the outline said that four characters are supposed to walk through the right door and... I realized I was wrong. I reread the chapter I just wrote and no, three characters must walk through the right door, and one must go left. It's important for her. It's honest to her. To make her go right would be to impose arbitrary author fiat on her, thus I only had one option. She went left.
Shit. I have a pivotal scene of her character arc coming up, requiring her to interact with a character on the right path, and it must take place before this other scene because that's the last time we'll be in this town, unless I have to reshuffle things and add another unnecessary trip back solely for this one scene just because my pacing got thrown off and—
Yeah, minor panic attack over that.
For my own sanity, I redid the outline with a precision edit, trying to minimize the bad ramifications as much as possible while preserving the good part of this change. I fully recognize that the better option would've been to throw out the rest of the outline and rewrite it from scratch, letting the character's honest voice drive the story in the direction it ought to go. I further recognize that the best option would've been to not publish any of the chapters until the story was complete, so that I retained freedom to edit prior chapters as needed. But, ye gods, if I'd written 10,000's of words of this future scene and got it down perfect, just to realize it was all completely unusable because it got invalidated by a prior chapter I hadn't written yet?
That'd hurt massively. I have difficulty thinking of advantages that outweigh this (highly likely) risk.
On the flipside, I've had silly mistakes in early chapters that I sort of regret. But I adapted to it. I lampshaded it, turned it into a running joke, even subverted it. It became part of the story's DNA. If I were to start over from the beginning, I probably would not make that same choice again, but in the process, the story would lose something of itself. Sort of a "happy little accident" a la Bob Ross.
4006632
Okay though, that hit home.
Please shut up. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and if I revise everything until it's Thoroughly Reconsidered, I will never publish.
As to writing out of order, I've got an overall outline I work from before I start writing the first chapter, but I also have to go in-order. From my point of view, going in-order lets the characters develop and make their own decisions, leaving me with some actually interesting uncertainty about where the story might go. Setting out everything that will happen before it happens leaves the story feeling railroaded.
This has, admittedly, resulted in in one case running off to research a bunch of scientific papers, implement a computing paper, and write another paper just to figure out whether the heroine or the villain is actually going to win their confrontation. Maybe I should have just railroaded that one.
4007402
That's a good point.
Language, BB. Please don't talk to people that way on my blog.
You don't need to keep reconsidering them, but you should be aware of them, and if the story isn't done but you don't know how to move forward, they're a place to go to rather than lose momentum.
4007277 The difference is that a "pure" pantser's first draft will often only resemble the final manuscript in passing. In terms of Fimfiction, it's always baffled me that everyone defaults to publishing their stories by chapter, rather than writing the whole thing and then posting it once they're happy with it.
4007659
I fully recognize that I should do this and have been making the effort, temporal discounting be p**ved.
4007659 I can explain this, having been slugged by it several times. At the early stage of writing, producing even *one* chapter is a huge event, much like climbing a mountain or delivering a ten pound baby. Most beginning writers would *never* produce an entire story if not for the siren call of the Positive Comment. The process goes much like this:
Publish a chapter.
Glow in the glory of the readers as they admire your work.
Use this glow as fuel to produce another chapter.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Monster suffered from this *very* badly. When I published the first 2-3 chapters, I had no idea it was going to take off and tear into the feature box with such energy. I had *intended* on popping out a chapter every two or three weeks. I wound up tying myself to an arbitrary goal of a chapter a week, edited and published. (Yes, positive comments are a little like crack. Ok, a *lot* like crack.) I almost wrote myself into a breakdown (well, a weak breakdown of playing WOW for two weeks straight once it was done) Never again. Since then, I've tried to restrain myself from publishing until the whole thing is done and edited. Far, far better quality results.
In short, without publishing chapters as they are done, many beginning writers may never get the energy to complete the massive project they want to produce. It may give a weaker product, but at least it produces *a* product. As you get more experienced, the process gets easier, and you can hold yourself back to finishing something right before showing it off. As an example, last March for the entire month, I published a chapter per *day* of things I had been working on and editing.
4008089
Really? So which do you like better?
The main difference between comments and crack is that I haven't figured out how to make any money off of comments. Yet.
4008455 Well, there are people who will pay for reviews and edits, although mostly peanuts. (sometimes literally) I would imagine even major publishing houses pay their in-house editors a small fraction of what a good plumber or HVAC mechanic makes. The moral of this story is: If you want to make money in fan fiction, learn how to repair air conditioners.
To throw in another reason for writer's block besides the one you listed:
D) Words aren't flowing. You know exactly what's happening in the story, but your brain is having trouble coming up with adequately formed sentences.
I usually solve the above by stopping for a moment and reading 2-3 pages of a good book.
4009180 I'm guessing you mean pretty sentences, not just adequate. I think the type of story that needs pretty sentences puts me in the right mood to write them. I didn't even try to write pretty sentences for "Breaking Peeved", don't think I could have if I'd tried, and don't think they'd have helped if I'd been able.
Because the last 12 times that I wrote this great scene that I was working towards, I always ended up deviating from my original plan in fits and spurts, and now I have this 5 page scene that won't fit in anywhere since now the characters are all doing something totally different at the time!
And then I'll be writing the latest scene, and suddenly I realize that they already had this particular moral quandary 5 chapters ago, so I go back to work on that, and then realize that the scene 5 chapters ago doesn't fit in at all, and introduces glaring plot holes and inconsistencies, none of which would have been a problem if I had just written that chapter now, in order, rather than 5 chapters ago where it doesn't belong.
You give good advice, and I have to say that it's a very good idea to not force yourself to write things in order, especially if it isn't coming. I just wanted to bring up a slightly different perspective that you might not have thought of.
D) You can't figure out how to get from where you are, to what you actually want to write.
4068916 If you can't figure out how to get from where you are, to what you actually want to write, how did you get where you are, and why are you staying there? I would write what I actually want to write, then write the other things necessary to support it.
4069429
It's easy to find the starting line, and I know exactly where I want to finish. What I'm saying is it's the middle part of the race that's the hardest.
4071965 True.