When words won't come: advice for the stuck writer

by Teri Terry

The Cry of the Stuck Author: I'm all impatient now because I started off so well! I want to have the whole plot worked out in a day! Damn it, this story telling malarkey is difficult...

Isn't it just.

I get asked all the time: what do you do when you hit the wall: the dreaded writer's block? There seems to be

Could this help?

an assumption behind the question that because I'm published now I've got it all figured out.

If only! Could there be one sweet, secret answer?

I'm not sure I believe in writer's block in the way this term is often used - I see it more as writer's procrastination. Or fear: of not finding the 'right' way. Of not being good enough.

Or this?

But staring at a page and not knowing what happens next, or, more usual in my case, knowing where I want to end up, but not being sure how to get there - that happens, all the time. 



This came up recently with a group of writing friends:

Caroline Green: What do you guys do (the ones who plan in advance) when you have a great idea and are all fired up and a synopsis is pouring out...and then you hit a brick wall and can't see around it at all? Write a chapter and see where it goes? Draw some sort of exciting graphic thingie? Cry?

I was fascinated at some of the answers. Some are things I've learned to do, some are new to me but I'm very definitely going to try them! 

So here they are:

1. Incubation: patience, grasshopper...

The pie of destiny may be just around the corner...

Hilary Freeman: Leave it a while. It'll come to you.






R.M. Ivory: Sleep/dream on it, like Hilary says it will come to you but sometimes you need some time and space away from it. In the meantime you could write a chapter or a scene from it and see what happens.


Maybe wisdom is hiding in a few of these?







Ruth Warburton: It depends on the brick wall. If it's something that happens further down the line in the plot, quite often I start writing and let my subconscious sort it out while I write - and often the key is in something to do with their characters which only becomes apparent while I write. Usually by the time I get to the wall it's solved. If it's something more fundamental about the shape of the book or something closer then I agree, it's a sign that it needs to grow a bit more in its egg before it hatches. Pop it back for some more incubation time.






Bryony Pearce: I give it time. My brain always works it out in the end. Did for me today in fact - had been stuck for weeks.


2. Slip into neutral: do something else,leaving your brain time and space to muddle things through





Teri Terry: write a blog. Have a very, very long shower.
 Make cookies. Or polish your ducks. 

Definite problem solvers, these ones

Addy Farmer: I go for a walk. It works pretty much every time. Everything unsticks or unknots and I find good ideas flow free. I always take a notebook with me, ready!

Candy Gourlay: When I'm stuck, I read until I'm back in the mood to write. The rule is that the book must be in the same mood, genre, general world, emotional place, as the scene I'm trying to write.

3. Make things up as you go along





Michelle Harrison: Blag it. I hit a wall with the synopsis of the book I'm writing now. I hate giving away everything anyway, even though you're *supposed* to, so I write it in a way that I call the extended blurb which doesn't give all the answers.


Dive in...!





Eve Harvey: I get my favourite pen out and an A4 notebook and just write any ideas I can think of, no matter how shite. I scribble and doodle all over page after page and eventually I write the solution. My pen and imagination seem to work well together.


4. Attack the problem: be analytical





Cath Murphy: I'm very analytical so I ask myself a lot of questions about what exactly the problem is and try to find an answer that way. Or sometimes I write backwards from the end (if I know what the end is). Or sometimes I give up and open a bottle of red wine.

A woman after my own heart





Emma Haughton: Like Cath I use questions. I use a fresh Word document and ask myself questions around the problem and write down all the possible solutions. Sometimes I use mindmaps too, to brainstorm all the possibilities. The answer always seems to emerge.


Sally Nicholls: Look at the things you've already given your characters - hobbies, relations, friends, skills, places. Often one of those turns out to be the solution.
You could even see it as a challenge - my main character needs to find her mum, and she's only got a love of art, a grumpy granny, an obsession with Facebook, two brothers, a cat, a D in maths, a holiday in France last year and a dream to be a ballerina to help her. Set it out like that and you discover she only really needs Granny and Facebook.


And me?
I was really fascinated by all of this, as I'd hit a wall recently in my shiny new thing, too. I knew the shape of the story, but there was an event that was crucial, with a specific result, and I couldn't work out how the event took place. The original way I'd envisioned was flawed and I needed a new way. And I tried writing down all the possibilities; I tried making it up as I went along. Nothing was working.

The wall of fear

One thing I've learned about myself more and more? Incubation really is key. No matter how much a deadline is looming, there's no point in barrelling ahead if the story hasn't cooked enough in my imagination.

In this instance I woke up from a sound sleep at 2 a.m., and the answer was just there, in my mind. How that I happens sometimes, I don't know! Both incubation, and letting my mind think/dream about it while I'm doing other things, seemed to play a role in this instance. In this case - and this happens to me a LOT - the problem was this: I was focusing on something specific (how to write a scene) when the problem was more general (there was an aspect of the story that needed to tie in, and I hadn't realized it yet).

The gingerbread of hope

I just thanked the muse for the gift, and got up in the middle of the night to write it down.

Overall?
The trick for me is working out when I'm stuck because I need to stop and think, and when I'm just being lazy. Sometimes just writing and going for it and seeing what happens can work. And I love tackling the how-to-get-from-a-to-b problem by scribbling all the possibilities I can think of with pen and paper: it is surprising how often this makes the answer blindingly obvious. I haven't attacked the problem in an analytical way so much, and I'm intrigued to try that.

But most of all - I'm just surprised nobody mentioned cake.

Maureen says, 'I'm Writing the Never Ending Story.'

When you think your story’s done. When you think you’ve ironed out all of the plot wrinkles. When you’ve upped the threat. When you’ve swept your characters towards the finale on a roller coaster of Oh no’s and Eeks! When you think you’ve searched out all of your writer’s ticks and squashed them between the pages of your book on grammar. When your writer friend has pronounced it BRILLIANT! When you think your story is FINALLY FINISHED. It’s a shock to discover ... it isn’t.

Seven Steps for Plotting and Pacing

by Maureen Lynas

WARNING! If you follow these steps you may never enjoy a book or film ever again. You may even experience marital and family discord. Now read on.

Candy's post on the First Page Panel in Singapore reminded of an activity I attempted (and failed) years ago. I'd just bought my very first 'how to' book - James Scott Bell's fabulous and essential Plot and Structure. The activity was:

Read four of your absolutely favourite novels and analyse them, pull them apart, because these books probably reflect the way you want to write and will give you a structure to follow.

I'm paraphrasing because I keep buying this book, lending this book and not getting this book back!

Great, fantastic advice, except – analyse them for what? For me this was a catch 22 situation. I couldn't analyse them until I understood story and I couldn't understand story until I'd analysed the books. So began a long journey to find out what makes a book tick. The other problem was – which four books? Because the books I loved to read for myself were not the books I wanted to write. I read adult books, but I wanted to write children's books, so analysing The Lord of the Rings, The Time Traveller's Wife or The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency was unlikely to help unless I was about to write about a young Orc detective called Sarumantha who can time hop. Gosh, there's an idea everywhere!

So, one thing I had to discover was – which children's books should I analyse. Which children's books did I want to read? And why? This took quite a bit of time but I eventually landed on - 

'I want to write the children's books I would have loved to read to my children (when they were children) and to the kids in my class (when I still had a class).' And 'It's my job to make kids laugh.'

Having these two statements to keep me focused was a huge help. So now I had some idea on what to analyse and once I started I couldn't stop. I became obsessed with getting to the nitty gritty of an author's skills and would jump with excitement when I'd 'cracked' another one. I would bore anyone who would listen, describing the techniques they'd used to make me laugh, cry, think, in minute detail – as if all of my friends, family and acquaintances were actually interested. Thank you for your patience! 

Eventually I had to accept that not everyone was as nuts as I was about writing and so I grabbed the chance to run the North East SCBWI in York, just so that I had the opportunity to share my obsession through chat, workshops and critiquing together. One day I found myself running a workshop on analysing Horrid Henry. I'm now sharing the notes from that workshop with you; they can be used to analyse any book or film, or used as a planning tool.

Analysing Horrid Henry

H

Henry's Here!

Identify the goal

• Henry's attempt to achieve his goal provides the major event of each book.
• The goal may be achieved during the event and the result will be positive for Henry.
• The goal may be achieved during he event but the result may be negative for Henry.

Identify Act one, two, three.

• Look for the inciting incident – the action that triggers the story. Because Horrid Henry is for young children this may be as simple as Mum saying, 'Bath-time!'
• The doorway in to act two – Henry engages with the story as a reaction to the inciting incident. In adult crime stories it can be as simple as being given a case to solve and the detective starts solving. In other stories there is more of an emotional involvement to the trigger. Do a bit of research – What is it in HH? Is it the same type of incident and doorway in each book? Is HH propelled into the story by outside forces or does he jump in?
• Look for the doorway out of act two and into act three. Does HH always solve his own problems in order to get into act three?
• Cut/mark the book into the three acts.

Now for the real fun 

The Seven Steps of Plotting

These are the seven steps to pacing and plotting that I use in my own writing because they do away with the annoying muddle in the middle. Five steps were found in an article in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by Meg Leader and Jack Heffron (thanks Geoff) and I've broken down the last one to include some steps from Revision and Editing by James Scott Bell.

The Seven Steps are 

Name. Preview. Contrast. The Event. Reflect. Reveal. React.

It's best to analyse in the following order.

Using coloured pens, identify the following (Just put one straight line from the top to the bottom of each section)

• Highlight the main event of the book (achievement of the goal) in red.
• Highlight the contrast scene (immediately before the event) in yellow.
  • What makes a contrast scene? A contrast scene is the argument before the kiss, the campfire before the battle, the success before the failure, or the failure before the success depending on the tone and genre of the work.
• Highlight Henry's reflection (immediately after the event) in dark green.
• Highlight what has been revealed (immediately after the reflection) in mid green.
• Highlight Henry's reaction/action (immediately after the revelation) in light green.
• Now go to earlier in the story and highlight any previewing of the event in blue.
  • Is the main event (achievement of the goal) shown in another way earlier in the story? Does a similar event happen to another person earlier in the story? Does a similar event go wrong for the protagonist earlier in the story. e.g in the book about the visit to the dentist, Moody Margaret goes into the treatment room just before Henry.
• Highlight any naming that takes place before the previewing. in orange.
  • Naming is very short, e.g. 'Horrid Henry sat in the dentists waiting room' is naming this event will be about HH having a battle with the dentist.
  • Other naming – Mentioning a catapult on the mantelpiece as part of early description means that you can use the catapult later. Or, you can use opposites to name things e.g. 'This won't hurt,' is naming 'This will hurt.' Or in a romantic comedy – 'I'll never kiss him' is naming – 'I will end up kissing him.'

 Of course you will have more than one event in a longer book so the steps can be intertwined. 

You should also analyse for

Cause and effect.

• What triggers movement between the steps. How does the story move on logically.
• What is expected? What would be obvious? What actually happens?

Each scene's emotional dynamic for each character.

• Up – down (happy to sad, excited to boring)
• Down – up (confusion to clarity, failure to success)

And there you have it. For now. Have you noticed - None of the above deals with the words, the language. I'll delve deeper into Horrid Henry horrendous world in my next blog on:

• Conflict
• Tone
• Escalation
• Rhetoric
• Opinion

Back to the apology mentioned at the beginning. If you do this properly – you will irritate people. They don't seem to like it if you watch a film pointing out the seven steps. I have no idea why. After all, what's wrong with a running commentary of , 'Ayup, it's a contrast scene.', 'Nice bit of naming there.', 'Did you see that gun on the mantlepiece? You know what that means, don't you? Don't you, eh?', 'Where was the preview! I can't believe there was no preview! How rubbish is that!' or 'Yay! I know what the event's going to be!'

Good luck.

Maureen

Maureen Lynas blogs intermittently on her own blog which she creatively named - Maureen Lynas
Maureen is the author of
The Action Words Reading Scheme
Florence and the Meanies
The Funeverse poetry site.