Stuck?

Got to a part in your book where you don’t know what happens next?

Know what happens next but don’t know how to write it?

Know how to write what happens but your characters won’t talk to you to back up your scene with dialogue?

Brain melting out your earholes?

Pulling hair off your head?

“Writers Block”?

If you think you’ve tried every trick in the book to get over it, I’m telling you now there is one method you haven’t tried that will work 99% of the time. It’s really bloody easy too. I almost don’t want to tell you because it feels like my own little secret. Like my own red button for launching nukes which I sit stroking whilst laughing manically at the fact that nobody knows how much power I have. What? It’s a perfectly normal analogy…

Moving along.

Wanna know what to do if you get stuck with your story?

Stop.

Put it to one side.

Go and read.

I don’t care what you read so long as it’s something you love. A book that draws you in. A book you don’t want to put down. If you can’t find a new book that makes you feel that way then go back to an old one that you’ve read before and start over. Forget about your manuscript.

Neglect your characters. Ignore your world and go visit someplace else instead.

Now here’s the tricky part.

When you get sucked into a book, when you’re at that point where you just have to read another page…

Stop.

Put the book down.

Go and write.

Now I’m not saying it will lead you to finish the rest of your story in one sitting. But I promise that this is more likely than any other method to help you get out of the slump. You may only write 100 words, but that’s 100 more than you had before isn’t it?

Sometimes we get lost within our creations, and our imagination gets overwhelmed with the scale of the task. We all need to escape from time to time, so give it a try.

Write on.

E.C. Jarvis is a British author working mainly in speculative and fantasy fiction genres. 

Since 2015, she has independently published six books spanning two different genres and series. The Machine, The Pirate, The War, and The Destiny in The Blood and Destiny series - a steampunk adventure. Desire and Duty, and Lust and Lies in The Consort's Chronicles series - an erotic fantasy.

If you like action packed, fast-paced page turners, then try one of her books. There's never a dull moment in those pages.

She was born in Surrey, England in 1982. She now resides in Hampshire, England with her daughter and husband.

https://www.amazon.com/E.C.-Jarvis/e/B0154YOIGI

https://www.facebook.com/E.C.JarvisAuthor

https://twitter.com/EC_Jarvis

WRITERS BLOCK?

First blog of 2016 and I’m rolling out the big guns. This “issue” has affected virtually every writer who has ever existed at some point in their writing experience. It’s upsetting, distressing and can leave you in a rut for months if not years.

Do I have a solution?

Not directly, BUT, I would like to offer a different perspective. Thinking about it a different way has helped me to get through these moments a lot quicker.

The majority of time wasted in writing involves us making a decision.  I came to a full stop the other day when I had to name a new character. I wasted over an hour trawling through my facebook friends names and baby names and name generator sites until I got the answer. That’s a whole bunch of time wasted on one small issue. It would have been easier to stick a placeholder in and keep on writing.

Bigger decisions need a different approach. Consider you have put character X and Z into situation A and we want to move them to situation B. A and B might be a universe apart physically and/or conceptually, so the journey between the two needs to be seamless. The trouble comes when we don’t know how it happens. So we sit and stare at the screen and then go waste time on social media whining about writers block. None of which is going to help you fix the problem.

If you’re a plotter, the answer is easy, just keep writing down options and ideas until you find the one that fits best and then go write it.

For me, the only way I get out of this is by forcing myself to write. I’m not much of a plotter. I’ll make vague notes about certain key points that I want to hit over the course of a book, but the rest is pure flow. The solution is virtually the same, stop worrying about the how and just start writing. If the first thing you try doesn’t work then don’t be afraid to delete and start over. Frustrating as it may be, it’s part of the process, a necessary evil.

Once you know WHAT you’re writing, the block will pass.

Write on!