5 Ways to Fix Writer's Block
Close the blank word doc, take your hands off the keyboard, and get out a pen and paper. Even just writing through my problem in pen can be enough to get the words going again, but if that doesn’t work, try drawing out diagrams of your plots alongside their subplots, make lists of all the things you like or don’t like, or try to recap what you’ve written already from memory.
Trust me, sometimes a change of scenery is all you need.
This is typically what I tell my writing friends when they’re stuck on their plot. Plots are driven by posing and answering questions. What are the implications of your characters or worldbuilding? What are the consequences of the thing that just happened?
If you’re not sure where to start, try getting someone else to read it and come up with questions or predictions about the unknown in your narrative. Often, ‘being stuck’ just means you’re focused too much on the closed door right in front of you, instead of looking around at all the other paths and directions you can take.
If your plot says the president needs to be kidnapped by your main characters, what are the implications? What would the news look like? The streets of downtown? The opposing political groups after their disappearance? What kind of impact would that have on your main characters? On their families who don’t know? Any question you can think of, write it down, see where it takes you.
I know for a lot of us this is annoying advice, but it’s true. You can’t write without fuel, and sometimes being stuck just means you’re out of inspiration. Reread a chapter of your favourite novel, or that new library book you haven’t gotten the chance to get to yet, or a graphic novel or even a synopsis of a movie you want to see.
Any type of reading can spark more words.
Grab a writing friend or mentor and talk through your story or problem. This works the same as grabbing a journal, except now you have feedback and new opinions to work with. Most the time, however, I don’t even need a response, I just needed to talk through the block in my mind before I’m off again.
5. Mess around and find out
This tip comes from my creative writing class—sometimes all a stuck story needs is to be messed with a little. Open a blank document and try writing the story beginning with the end—or the middle, or with a side character, or the antagonist. Try changing the tone, or take a word crucial to your plot and try to write without it. Maybe, even, you’ll find that the change you made works even better than what you had originally planned.
