Writer’s Block, tips on writing through it part 1

I’ve read over and over again where author’s tell you to write through writer’s block. Not very good advice when you have a bad case of writer’s block. Here’s some tips on how to write yourself out of writer’s block.

Background. I’m in the hospital with a very very sick family member. Yes, I use to many adjectives and adverbs. Twenty four hours in ER. No windows, noisy, don’t know if it’s light or dark outside. The clock on the wall crawls at half speed. The hospital is full and there’s no place to put my sick family member.

My family member finally falls asleep so I pull out the writing pad. Ink pen and real paper. Working on a story will make the time go by faster.

I can’t write. I’m an emotional wreck but I got to write and it will take my mind off my problems. Things are getting better.

Tip one.

Don’t blame yourself for writer’s block, blame your hero, your protagonist. It’s not that you have run out of stuff to write about. It’s that your hero has run out of stuff to do. The story is about your hero doing interesting things so go have him do something. Have him go to the bank then have a holdup take place while he’s there. Now make the bank robbery part of the story or have the villain involved (villains need money and it worked in the Batman movie). Or show the hero’s flaws, he goes into a cheap pizza place to buy a very cheap pizza because he is so cheap he doesn’t want to pay the delivery fee or tip the driver because it’s the driver job to drive. The hero lacks will power and over eats when feeling down and the villain has just defeated him. He’s down because the world is so unjust and hard. It shouldn’t be so hard to defeat the villain. It should be easy just like TV or the movies the plan should just fall into place like the A team. Suddenly in the pizza shop he sees the delivery guy and realizes that this is the drug delivery boy (you want some heroin with the pizza?) and the delivery guy can lead him to the villain.

Better yet switch to the villains perspective or even into his mind. Show that the villain is not some mental case that just does things to be bad. He has plans, has long range plans. He’s been working on and executing these plans for years. Show how he reacts to the hero trying to stop him. If that simpleton can figure the plan out then the police or the government can figure the plan out. Show him shaken up and changing his plans so they are harder to stop. This is the time to show the key weakness to the plan. For example the villain going to blow up railroad bridges that run from coal mines to power stations. He’s trying to stop mankind from generating so much CO2 and causing global warming. A few people getting killed on the railroad train is nothing to the number of people that will die from global warming in the near future. The villain doesn’t think about it being the middle of winter and all the people that will freeze to death without electricity to move the natural gas and oil needed to heat homes. The bridges will take years to replace and he’s using the environmentalist group to oppose rebuilding the bridges (the environmental group is getting ready to stop rebuilding bridges that have yet to be destroyed and that is a way for the hero to find out which bridges are threatened). Then show how he is going to blow up a large number of bridges and how he changes the plan so that which bridge that is going to be blown up can only be detected one hour before it blows. We’ll talk later about how to write yourself out of this box.

Or have the hero show his reluctance to be a hero. It’s so bad that the hero wimps out. He wants to go back home and starts packing. Have his mentor beat the crap out of him for quitting. Or have the people depending on him tell him that he’s the one, the chosen one, and he can’t un-chose himself and the only way he is getting out of this is in a pine box, and the dwarf has a hammer and there are plenty of pine tree on the side of the mountain. (these are the good guys, his buddies).

Remember write it down. Thinking up a way out of writers block will do you no good if you don’t write. Beat writers block by writing.

Tip two coming soon.

Write on, draw on.    Professor Voltage.