Maintaining Steam: Writer's Block II (Patreon)

Last time I started talking about some of the types of writer's block I encounter when I'm writing. And this time I'm going to continue and talk about some of the other types of writer's block I encounter...and how I tend to work through them.

I do strongly believe all types of writer's block can be worked through - often it's just frustrating and easy to procrastinate instead of working working to get through them.

So let's jump in!

Too Little Planning

Another really common cause of writer's block is too little planning (or no planning). Pre-planning can be really irritating to do when you're excited about just getting into the writing. It can also be something that is frustrating if you're a natural "pantser" (that is a writer who likes to just make it up as you go). 

Maybe planning too much in advance makes you feel stifled and constrained - and makes your writing feel stiff and unnatural. That is all understandable. But I've found that not doing any planning at all - or else doing very little - frequently leads to a block of some kind down the line.

Usually one of two outcomes occurs. You hit a point in the story where your ideas run out, and you don't know where to go next. Like a driver with no destination, you're stuck on a road without knowing where to make your next turn. Your initial surge of inspiration and motivation only get you so far, and when those run out you can completely lose track of your plot.

The other situation is that you write yourself to a point from which there is no logical progression or conclusion. Essentially, you write yourself into a corner and there's no logical way out of it. For instance, your characters are trapped in a cave...and you can't figure out a way to get them out of it. But if they don't get out, the story can't continue. So what do you do?

Inevitably the most effective solutions will involve doing the planning you previously neglected. Most of the time we know this...

But we don't want to do it because it's a pain. We know we're going to have to sit and think and plan and brainstorm through the problem. And that's frustrating and tiring...so we avoid it. And thus the problem becomes a block and the block becomes a motivation problem. 

Hitting the Wall

If you've written yourself to a point where you don't know where to take the story, there's no way around it. You're going to have to do the brainstorming and basic outlining you didn't do when you started.

 If you're lucky, you'll get the lightning bolt of inspiration and be able to continue pantsing through the story. But that's not the reality for most of us. 

Sometimes I've found that taking a walk while ruminating on the story helps a lot with this. Or really doing any thinking about the story during an otherwise low brain-power activity (taking a shower, doing dishes, etc). I can literally talk myself through the problem - like untangling a knot.

Instead of sitting at a desk pulling my hair out over the outline, this is just a more natural and less frustrating way to get myself through the block.

But when it comes down to it - it's just another method of planning. And there is no way out of this kind of problem that doesn't involve some kind of planning and brainstorming.

In a Corner

I think the more difficult of these two situation is when you've written yourself into a corner from which there is no logical escape. Unfortunately, sometimes, the only thing you can do is backtrack until you're out of the corner, then brainstorm and write out your next steps so you can avoid the corner in the first place.

Sometimes it feels like people are afraid to edit their stories or are afraid to backtrack, even if it's needed.

They don't want to have to scrap part of their story, so they desperately try to work out some way out of the corner that doesn't involve backtracking and removing content. I have also run into this problem before.

And sometimes I've had to remove content I really liked. But that content was causing problems and preventing forward movement, so I had to cut it. And it can be really difficult to bring yourself to do that. But a lot of times, with this kind of block, it's just necessary.

Backtrack, then brainstorm, then plan and outline your way around the corner instead of back into it. It's deceptively simple but often really difficult to enact. Because...

It's a pain. It's frustrating. Brainstorming can be hard. Lightning bolt inspiration is awesome, but trying to force and build ideas from scratch is difficult. 

How to Plan When You Hate Planning

There may not much technical skill involved in brainstorming and planning, but I think the difficulty comes in having the discipline to do it. The above situations are frustrating and discouraging. Fixing them is often tedious and even more frustrating.

It's very easy to go into avoidance mode instead of dealing with them and fixing the story. And I think that's where a lot of people really get stuck. Instead of fixing the broken story, they get distracted by a new one because starting from scratch is less frustrating than fixing the thing you've already begun.

The big takeaway from this section is that, unfortunately, sometimes planning is required. Without it, you are going to be prone to getting stuck - and then you're going to have to do the planning anyway. You have to have the discipline and determination to continue working on a story that is floundering. Because your two options are to work through it or give up. 

There are some writers who hate planning and others who actually get so bogged down with it that they kind of stall out and stop working. This is actually the type of writer I am. I'm more of a "plantser" who tries to do at least some vague planning, but not much. And often, not enough.

It's really easy for me to get overwhelmed with too much planning. I know that many writers use fancy flow charts and mind maps and heavily structured, detailed outlines when they plan. But these things tend to impede rather than help me.

So how do I plan even though I hate planning? 

For me, it's always about reducing the scale to something more manageable. Because of that, I work best in the language of beat sheets and summaries rather than full, detailed outlines. 

For those unfamiliar with it, "beat sheet" is just a list of bullet points that address the main plot events in a scene, a chapter, a completed story. It's a really simple form of outlining that I find works better for me than something more detailed and involved, because you are only noting the order of the significant moments. You aren't letting yourself fuss over the more minute details.

You can make a beat sheet as detailed or as broad as you want, which is one of the things I find really useful about them.

Another strategy I use is creating a summary or synopsis that goes chapter by chapter or even scene by scene.

Rather than trying to think about specifics, I try to write out a more of a broad summary of what I want to occur in a given part of the story. This keeps me from getting bogged down in details that would be better left to spontaneity. At the same time, it helps me identify the goal for each chapter as well as the major events that need to occur. 

By doing this, I can avoid getting myself into corners, and I can create a rough path to follow as I write so I don't lose direction.

Because beat sheets and summaries are pretty fluid and sparse, they don't feel overly rigid. And they don't cut down on the spontaneity enjoy when I write. I also don't feel bad when I end up changing things or re-vamping ideas.

I think people who are not planning-focused writers can benefit from finding simple strategies that help give some direction without becoming too overwhelming and involved. There are a lot of simple, quick ways to do this without having to delve into anything too fancy or detailed.

From A to B

Before we leave the topic of getting stuck, I wanted to talk about one more common type of "getting stuck" that I encounter while writing.

And I feel like this one can happen even with good planning because it often comes down to really getting stuck in the minutiae of a scene. Sometimes it's literally about just not knowing how to word sentences or control the flow of events. 

Typically, you are at point A, and you know you're going to point B. But you have no idea how use language to get there. You stare at the screen and don't even know what words to write. This can be on a larger scale within a story, but it can occur on a really small scale as well - within individual chapters or scenes.

This one can be the result of poor planning, but like I said, not always. Because it often involves this vague "I know what I want to write, but I don't know how to write it..." straight up planning isn't necessarily going to save you. 

When I have these moments, here's my approach:

First of all, I try to not think too big. If I'm getting stuck within the larger scope of the story - I reduce my scale. I always try to write scene to scene and chapter to chapter, so I can keep my focus small and not get weighed down by the pressure of the entire story. I try to look at things like larger plot flow and story arcs during my structural edit, while kind of avoiding thinking too deeply about them during the initial writing phase. 

It's much easier to think about how I'm going to get to the end of the current scene than it is to think about how I'm going to get to the end of the entire story. Scaling down and focusing on things scene by scene is really helpful for me, so that's where I start. 

If I'm in a scene and I know where I need to get but I'm really stuck on the phrasing and sentences and, well, how to write it, I default into two methods: The first is to write out my scene beats, and the second is embracing the potato. These combine to form the ultra potato (it's a thing. I swear.) 

Let's say I have a scene summary that goes like this:

Bob wakes up one morning to find an alien invasion going on. He goes outside to fight but gets attacked by an alien. A friend of his saves him, and they go meet up with other friends to come up with a strategy to defend earth.

In this case I know what I want to do, but maybe I've gotten stuck on the details. My first step is to write out the beats in a slightly more detailed way (usually using complete sentences).

• -Bob gets out of bed and is groggy.
• -He wonders why it's so dark and goes to look out the window. 
• -When he does that, he realises there's an alien invasion going on! It must have happened while he was in bed. 
• -Bob scrambles for clothes, pulling on whatever he can find on the floor.
• -Forgetting everything else, he grabs a kitchen knife and runs outside. 
• -And alien invader drops off the roof of his house and tries to suck out his brain. Or at least, that's what he assumes. He brandishes the knife threateningly.
• -The alien asks if Bob thinks that knife will save him. Bob says "Attack me and you'll find out when I stab you." It's super witty! The alien advances on him. 
• -Bob's friend Max appears from over the fence and shoots the alien, which flees down the street. Bob asks Max to update him on the situation, and Max says they've all gathered at Milly's house to come up with a strategy. 
• -He and Bob head there together, keeping an eye out for more aliens. 

By doing this, I give myself a slightly more detailed framework of events. 

When I have the scene beats more or less planned out, I like to do what I call "stepping stones" - this is when I write out the beats I can very clearly see in my head, but I don't bother fleshing out the ones I'm not sure about yet. 

If you imagine the scene as being a river I have to build a bridge across, this method gives me loosely spaced, wobbly stepping stones across the river (scene). For instance, maybe I can clearly see the scene where Bob wakes up and the scene where the alien attacks him and the scene where Max shows up. The dialogue in those moments is clear to me, and some of the sentences are naturally flowing. I write those moments, but don't touch the rest just yet. This lets me focus on fleshing out the "easy" parts and slowly piecing the scene together instead of trying ot just write it out in chronological order. 

The next step is to start tying those stepping stones together. This is where I really have to accept just how potato-y this scene is going to be at first. Because while the individual stepping stone parts I've written may be okay, the parts tying them together are going to be really, really rough. Sometimes I literally just use the sentences from my beat sheet to transition from one beat to the next.

Because, at this point, I am not trying to write a great scene. I'm trying to create a scene I can read from start to finish without overt gaps. It's okay if it sucks. It's okay if some of the moments or events are described a single, poorly worded sentence. 

If I'm struggling to describe Max climbing over the fence, I may literally write "Max clambered down the fence brandishing a weirdly big gun." or something else equally clunky and hamfisted. 

When you're in this situation as a writer, the important thing is to get the scene written. Get it to a point where you can read through the whole scene without gaps. That's it. Fixing it can come after you get a logical progression of events on the page.

We don't need an architectural masterpiece. We just need a bridge that lets us get across the river from point A to point B. 

A lot of times, when I get the scene loosely threaded together, I go back and do one edit to just flesh it out a little and make it slightly more readable. And then I just move on.

Using this kind of method of slowly structuring and building a scene piece by piece has nearly always helped me get past this kind of block, because it massively reduces the scale of my thinking, and shifts my goal from "write a good scene" to "write a functional scene." 

A scene that is functional but lacking in finesse and artistry still serves me better than a scene that remains unwritten because I'm stuck on how to make it "good." This always goes back to the principle that bad writing can be made better through editing.

Something that is unwritten...is just unwritten.

And those are basically the types of writer's block I encounter - I'm sure there are other problems people encounter when writing. And many of these problems can lead to a feeling of writer's block if you're not sure how to work through them. These are just the ones I mostly encounter.

The last thing I want to discuss in this series is what to do when you get bored with a story and you momentum slows because you've lost interest. 

But that will be in my next post! So until then...

TO BE CONTINUED...