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Writers Block, Tips for writing through it Part 5

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You’re desperate, nothing helps, everything you’ve tried doesn’t work.

Tip 5

Hit the plot complication button.

Stop trying to be original, stop trying to come up with a new story line. Use the oldest cliche you can think of. Can’t think of an over used cliche just watch ten minutes of TV. Reruns and Mystery Science Theater 3000 are good ones to watch for stale, tired plot complications.

Stop trying so hard and write.

Write using the old standards from daytime soap operas. The evil twin, he’s not really dead, the husband that deserted shows up at her wedding, are great places to start.

Remember the goal is to start writing. The most worn out cliche can be fixed in a rewrite.

 

Write on, draw on.    Professor Voltage

Writers Block, Tips on writing through it part 3

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Tip 3

Bring back a throwaway character.

You had a character who’s sole purpose was to impact some tiny bit of information or do an action. The throwaway character has an endearing trait but would never be seen again in the story. Make the character a reoccurring character. Take another throwaway character and combine the two. Give the throwaway character a job that makes the character able to appear again and again in the story. Think about the guy with the lisp behind the hotel check-in counter in the Eddy Murphy movie.

Make the minor character frustrating because they live in their own world and don’t care about the hero’s world but hold key knowledge that the hero needs. Have the throwaway character only give the knowledge up if asked the right question. The gardener knows that the dead lady was allergic to raspberries because he grows prize winning raspberries and she wouldn’t let him grow them at her place. Or the busybody gossip saw the yoga instructor in Prada high heels at noon time when the instructor only wear tennis shoes and has been seen bare footed in public.

Don’t forget the villain’s sidekick. Write about him doing the villain’s dirty work. Building don’t magically blow themselves up, somebody has to plant the explosives and it takes a lot of explosives to blow up a building. Show the villain’s sidekick planning to shove the villain aside and take over. Better yet have the sidekick plan his escape (he’s smarter than a rabbit and a rabbit always has more than one exit hole out of it’s den). Still better yet show the sidekicks has his own agenda, he’s going to take the explosives that the villain plans to use to blow up the massively polluting power station and use them to blow up the National Security Administration’s satellite data gathering center.

Remember throwaway characters, minor characters are important. Some throwaway characters have spawned their own wildly successful series.

 

Write on, draw on.   Professor Voltage

Writer’s block, tips on writing through it part 2

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Tip two.

Make a list, make a bunch of lists.

On a sheet of paper list ten items in column A of things the hero has to do to win or get to the end of the story. In column B list ten items or things the villain must do to achieve his goal. These can be big goals or little goals. The hero’s goals could be to save the world, get the girl, get a job, get out of debt. The villain’s goal could be to save the world, get the girl, (he’s already got a job), win fame as the savior of the world, even lead a revolution to save the world.

Now take the top item from column A and the bottom item from column B and mash them up. Doesn’t offer a quick fix then try another item from each column. Save your most important items for the end of the story. It may not sound like much but matching a column A item like getting a six pack of beer with a column B item like taking over the world ended up with the hero pouring warm beer into the villain’s doomsday device and the beer shorting the device out thus saving the world.

Make another list of the things the hero needs to save the day. Make a column of things the villain needs. List the items with the least important item on top. Write a scene showing the hero or villain making or getting the item he needs. No cheating by having him drive to the discount mad scientist outlet. Have the hero stand behind the villain in the checkout line at the hardware store where each is buying something they need.

Make a list of places the hero would never go and make him go there and show the problems he has there and why he dislikes being there. Do the same for the villain.

Make a list of things the sidekick could do to help the hero but would instead help the villain.

Make a list of red herrings.

 

Write on, draw on.    Professor Voltage

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

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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.