Responses to being stuck

I think generally, when you hit a roadblock because of a problem with the plot or inadequate research, you know it. You sit back and go 'Oh, damn, how can I bet A to B in a day?' or 'This won't work - I have no idea how you fight with Japanese sai knives.'. Then you go off and fix it.

But when someone says they're 'blocked' - as in, there's no actual problem with what they're writing, they just can't get interested or can't find the right words, then it's more likely to be a motivational problem. I have had this problem myself in the past, when I became convinced that everything I was writing was dross. I kept going back and re-writing the same three chapters, over and over, until they really WERE dross. It was only when I forbad myself to revise a single word (while writing the first draft) that I escaped from the loop.

When someone is in a situation like that, quite often common sense is useless. But any one of a million mad, nonsensical methods could be the one to trick you back into working again.

I am therefore perplexed that when similar problems come up in online forums, people offer motivational advice - e.g. music, location, permission to write crap, BIC, embracing or surpressing the fear, let the characters guide you - more often than they suggest technical fixes.

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Those are technical fixes. They're there to avoid the very specific problem of slipping into apathy, lethargy, procrastination, and having something end after 40,000 words or so because it grew tiring before its time. They can't usually offer specific help on what you're writing for the simple reason that they don't know it.

I'm with you, Zornhau. When I'm blocked, it's generally because I need to figure some things out.

But when someone says they're 'blocked' - as in, there's no actual problem with what they're writing, they just can't get interested or can't find the right words, then it's more likely to be a motivational problem.

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IMO, this is a problem with the story, not with the writer. How often does a writer have a problem staying interested while writing a scene involving intense conflict? Probably the interest wanes when there's not enough conflict. My solution is to list the worst possible things that could happen to the character, and then pick one and make it so. Voila. Interest returns.

azbikergirl said:

IMHO this is a problem with the story, not with the writer. How often does a writer have a problem staying interested while writing a scene involving intense conflict? Probably the interest wanes when there's not enough conflict. My solution is to list the worst possible things that could happen to the character, and then pick one and make it so. Voila. Interest returns.

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Obviously the reasons for writers 'blocking' are as various as the personalities of writers themselves. Quite often I find myself stalling right in the middle of what someone else might think was the most 'interesting' bit of the story. With my second book, I was writing a huge set-piece scene and suddenly I found that I was sick and tired of the story. I didn't want to spend another moment in that scene! The book had been so full of anguish and action, and I wanted so desperately to get it right, that I'd exhausted myself.

Adding more conflict wasn't going to help. Doing more research wasn't going to help. After a couple of weeks of dancing around it I finally got out paper and pencil and started messing around with something else (totally different) and suddenly I wanted to get back to writing my tense scene of magical battle desperately! I'd come at it sideways and in doing so I'd unblocked myself.

This might seem incomprehensible to some. To others it might ring a bell. But it would certainly be a funny - and boring - world if we were all the same.

I agree that sometimes burn-out can make this writer tired of a story (or writing in general), but in that case, none of the "motivation" tricks help. I've gone as many as three weeks without working on my novel because I was just too burned out to think about it anymore. Once I distanced myself from it for a bit, had some fun and a change of scenery, my desire to work on it returned with a fervor.

I rarely know at first whether a block is psychological or structural. Sometimes my brain's just recalcitrant, but I can usually work through that with proper application of BIC.

If I'm burned out or my brain's completely recalcitrant, I'll play hooky, or I'll go somewhere else to work. Sometimes this is enough to fix things. But I'd say that roughly 75% of the time, when my brain goes on strike and refuses to cooperate for no obvious reason, it's trying to tell me that there's something wrong with what I'm trying to do. (Though I do sometimes get cold feet when facing an unpleasant scene, in that case there's never any question of what's going on.)

For what it's worth, my structural issues tend to fall into the same few categories:

-- I don't sufficiently understand one or more characters' motivations.

-- The scene has insufficient conflict -- it's just there for pacing or structural purposes.

-- I'm trying to force things in a direction they won't naturally go.

-- I'm trying to cheat my way out of difficult but necessary staging.

Brainstorming is my one-size-fits-all solution to structural issues, I'm afraid. For me, at least, the answer is usually already in my head. It's just a question of getting it out on the page.