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Serious Writing Trouble?



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Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:29 am
LMAuthor312 says...



I have been having a problem recently. My novel has been in the works for a few years now and I finally have the time to really get this thing done and published (HOPEFULLY). However, I have hit a huge snag. I've lost nearly all motivation and inspiration. My mind is still in full on story mode, but I can't get the words onto paper. There's a block in my mind and its causing some pretty serious depression. Writing is one of the few joys in my life and I'm seriously struggling with it. I have many ideas and they all make me happy and proud. Writing them just feels so impossible right now. Does anyone have any tips to get me out of this slump? I've been reading to try and get some words onto a page, but not much luck. I'm desperate at this point. Also, this doesn't feel like writer's block. I still get these grand ideas and I know where I want this story to go. It's just words don't seem to want to flow right. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
  





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Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:15 am
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Kale says...



Have you tried focusing on just getting words out, regardless of quality, and leaving the editing for a later draft. I used to run into blocks all the time because the words in my vision didn't match up with the words I got out on the page after a certain point, and the situation would just get worse the more I tried.

Nowadays, I consider my first draft to be more of a Draft 0 like the ground zero of a disaster because that is what it is: a disaster of vaguely coherent word vomit. And that is okay because I can revise it into something more coherent for Draft 1 and maybe weed out some ideas that seemed better than they actually were in the process.
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Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:31 am
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Megrim says...



Maybe it's that you don't know how to translate those big ideas into a concrete series of scenes? There's always more details, more "crap how do I get from A to B", than you expected in your head. (There's also the issue of it never feeling right once it's plain old text instead of a grand movie scene in your head, but it doesn't sound like you're getting far enough to run into that problem yet :P)

Try taking it scene by scene. I'll just make up an example.

Say I have a grand idea to write about an art collector who turns into a vigilante. Oh man there will be this cool chase scene, and this awesome villain, and she'll have x, y, and z gadgets. So cool and fun.

But meh. Ya gotta write the scenes in between that stuff, and that's boring. The trick is making that part un-boring. And my secret ingredient is always "tension and conflict." (blog post)

So just take the next scene you have to write. Say I finished the awesome chase scene, she used all her cool gadgets, and now she's at home alone decompressing after all that. There's a cool scene coming up where she runs into the villain at the grocery store, but I'm not there yet. And ugh how do I get there.

Option 1- "leave out the boring bits." Struggling to write a scene? Skip that scene! Cut to the next interesting part.

Option 2- Sitting around taking stock of the situation is boring. Time to throw in a wrench. When she gets home, something is dreadfully wrong. Maybe the house has been broken into. Maybe her gadgets went off and caused chaos. Maybe she gets home okay, but while she's home, some crazy thing happens. Someone tries to blow her up, or drop a car onto the house smashing in the roof. She's halfway through sauteeing some curry for the evening when things go boom. Or maybe someone she helped a few chapters ago comes running to her door, pounding to be let in, soaking wet, claiming "they're" after him. Who cares if that wasn't in the outline! It sure makes the scene interesting to write now!

Whatever you do, don't sit there and force yourself through dull scenes. You'll be bored the whole time, and your readers will feel it. They'll end up bored too, and probably you'll end up cutting it anyway if that's the case. If putting one word in front of the other doesn't excite you, then you're writing a boring scene. And there's just not enough time in life to waste on boring scenes.
  








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