Why would I be writing an article about getting past writer’s block when there are so many other resources out there?
It is because the following tips are more than just tips: they are steps you can take to start writing again, and they worked for me. They were, in fact, thought up by me when I had writer’s block. These steps that came naturally to me as a writer trying to figure out how to get back on my feet are really an ordered set of actions anyone could take.
So let’s say your project has ground to a halt. We hate it when that happens. Maybe you don’t know what should happen next, or you do know what should happen next but you just can’t get words on a page. Maybe your characters feel flat. Maybe you’ve written so hard for the past few weeks you’ve burned yourself out. As long as the cause of your blockage is not laziness or procrastination–in which case you should go write right now–the seven steps below will help you get back into a writing groove.
- Take a break from your project(s). Forget they exist. Do something else– hike, sleep, whatever. Let ideas gather in your subconscious mind. Once, when I had a small burnout for a couple of days, watching an episode of Rings of Power was what gave me the idea that sparked my next few scenes. When I had a blockage for a longer period of time, being on vacation and resting my mind helped me see a few things in the plot of my story which needed to be changed.
- However, even while you’re resting, keep writing. It could be working on a side project. It could be a journal entry or poetry. It could be one word every day. But you need to work towards a consistent writing habit (more on that later) so that even if you get blocked on one project, you won’t abandon your writing. When I had the earlier-mentioned short-term burnout, I tried to keep writing, but I wrote other things besides my main project– stories about alien police chases, poems, anything as long as I was writing.
- Once you feel rested, come back to your story, but don’t work on it right away. Instead, write something lighter related to that story– some backstory, or a short story about one of your side characters. During my longer blockage, after I had rested for a couple of weeks, I wrote a short story about how a weird lizard monster attacked someone. It may have seemed unrelated to my main project by anyone else who read it, but it helped me understand some of the context by which the antagonist in the story came to power.
- Now that you’ve come back to your project, evaluate the story. Does the plot make sense? Does it seem like what the characters are doing is natural? If not, you may need to make some adjustments. For me, this was realizing that if my characters were a few years older, the story would make more sense–something I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t had the fresh eyes a break from my project gave me.
- If you feel like your characters themselves are flat, try writing from their perspectives in first person. If you haven’t already, write down somewhere the characters’ qualities, personality, flaws, etc. If you have, go back to it. Does it need to be changed? Could you add more?
- Finally, to banish writer’s block from your life forever, you must form a strong writing habit of writing at a consistent time every day. You will feel ready to write at that time, and hopefully will have some ideas. Once I started consistently writing every day in the morning, I was always able to write something, even if it wasn’t much.
How long each step will last for you is a decision you can make.
Well, I figured that since these steps have worked for me, they might work for someone else. So I thought, why not share them? And here they are.