I’m gonna throw in some of my favourite pieces of writing advice, since you guys liked the last post on the subject.
1. Master the scientific method, and apply it to your writing - not only your work, but your actions as a writer, like where and when you write. Take the time to figure out what works for you, and how it works. That way, when something stops working, or you can’t do it any more, you’ll have some idea on how to address the problem.
For example - I write best in the morning, as a rule, before I get tired, but I do some of my best dialogue in the evening, so if I’m stuck on dialogue I’ll come back to it after dinner. If I have a busy morning and can’t write then, a little nap may help to reset my brain creatively. If I can’t do that, watching or reading something particularly well-written can help inspire me to emulation.
2. If you get really stuck, especially in a high-octane part of the narrative, go back and check how long it’s been since your character(s) last had a chance to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet. Even if you didn’t explicitly describe the action, a sentence like ‘later that day’ or ‘the next morning’ tells your readers ‘yes, they’ve had chance at a nap and a whizz’. If it’s been too long, you and your character may both have Action Fatigue, and need a down-time scene to reset.
(One of my favourite Star Trek novels of all time features a character finding herself in the position of having to ask THE Commander Spock for permission to tinkle while on bridge duty. By the time she comes out, the Klingons have arrived. One of the best uses of ‘the bladder waits for no narrative’ I’ve ever read, and it worked perfectly as a brief break in the intensity followed by ‘oh no, now it’s worse’.)
3. The Wall. The Wall was something we got warned about a lot in the early days of NaNoWriMo, though I don’t see it as much these days. Basically, at a point between 18K and 25K in a novel-length endeavour, most people (especially beginning writers) suddenly hit a wall and don’t know what to write next and they hate their story and everything is terrible. In NaNo, this is referred to as ‘Week Two’, and nobody likes Week Two. It’s the point at which most people quit.
This is perfectly normal and happens even to published authors. It’s basically the point at which you can’t postpone it any more and you have to shift from Act 1 (setup and introductions) to Act 2 (progressing plot), and it’s harder to do and suddenly you go from coasting along enjoying the flow to hitting the part where you have to pedal uphill. It’s the single hardest part of the whole writing process, for a lot of people. All I can tell you is that if you do that hard pedalling, the second coast is going to be even better and more fun, and we all have to do it.
4. Save everything. Even if it’s bad. You never know when, years later, you’ll remember some idea out of the blue and be all ‘WAIT that would be the perfect b-plot for this story I’m writing now how did it go again?’ and have to go digging. (This has happened to me multiple times. An idea that didn’t work for one story might be perfect for a different one. Don’t lose it.)
tangentwithtanner
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
izzy806
