Writer Block First Aid Kit

Writer Block First Aid Kit

We’ve all been there. Some people have it all the time. Some say it doesn’t exist. I class writer’s block as anything from lack of motivation to not being able to solve a plot problem. Whatever it is, here’s a list of activities to try and get those creative rivers running. 

Move. Pick up your laptop and go to a different room. They say a change is as good as a rest and this can be true with writing. Move to the kitchen. Write outside. Go to a coffee shop. Sit in the cupboard under the stairs and block out the world. Just change up the scenery. 

Swap Medium. If words just aren’t doing it for you make aesthetics, mood boards, draw maps or characters. Victoria Aveyard once said she designed book covers and let the plot stew in the back of her mind. 

Write Something Else. Working on other projects can give you inspiration for what you’re working on now. Find some prompts. Write irrelevant short stories or character studies. Write about your characters as kids or at defining points in their lives. 

Plot. Hands off the keyboard, open up one of those many unused notebooks I know you have and start scribbling vague, half formed ideas. Allow yourself to write things you might discard later. Allow yourself to try and work through an idea you like but don’t understand yet. Try and work out the next 10 steps. 10 things you want to cover. 10 scenes. 10 days. Whatever it is, just write it down. 

20 Minutes Rule. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Sit your butt down in that chair and write for 20 minutes. I don’t care if it’s trash. I don’t care if you’re going to delete it all later. I don’t care if it’s nonsense. Do it. 20 minutes of writing nonsense is still more productive than 20 minutes staring at that wall. After 20 minutes if you still don’t want to write, leave it, but you just might find yourself inspired. 

Finally, Take Time Off. If none of this is working, it’s likely a sign of burn out. Take some time for yourself and just do nothing. “Write every single day,” yeah sure if you wont to be a machine who pumps out words instead of art. Sometimes you need to recharge before you move forward and that doesn’t just mean getting a good nights sleep. Look after yourself and be kind. This isn’t a race against the clock, you have your whole life to publish a book. 

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a plot twist tip you don't hear very often

Sometimes suspense is worth it, even if it means serving your audience the entire plot on a silver platter:

In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn't dead. Romeo does not. It's a tragedy. You sympathize with the characters.

In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to expose the murderer of King Laius, not knowing that he himself is the murderer.

In the TV-show Breaking Bad, a DEA agent is looking for a crystal-meth producer who calls himself ''Heisenberg,'' not knowing that Heisenberg is his brother-in-law. Throughout the show, we follow Walter White (Heisenberg) as he grows his drug empire, while also having dinner by the pool with his brother-in-law. And we can't stop asking ourselves: when will this DEA agent figure out that the person he's looking for has been right under his nose all this time?

That my friends, is what we call dramatic irony. A literary device in which the audience's understanding of certain events or individuals in a story surpasses that of its characters.

What is meant by that is simple: it's not necessary for each and every plot twist in your story to come as a surprise to your audience. We all know that Scar is the one who really killed Mufasa, but that doesn't take anything away from the emotional impact following his death.

You will still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what's going to happen, but out of fear, and excitement, of how the characters they've grown to love are going to react to it.

So it's not in any way wrong to drop important information ahead of time! Sometimes the best way to tackle a twist is simply to let your audience in on what's happening. Let them anticipate the emotional reactions of the characters. In certain cases, that on its own can be torture for whoever it is that's watching.

For all they know, this plot twist, and I am using plot twist loosely, it can just as well be a secret big enough to destroy a relationship, but not something that is going to affect every character, could potentially come to ruin everything your audience have grown attached to.

It can turn characters against each other, massive consequences to follow. Perhaps a certain character is heading towards certain death, perhaps their partner's falling for someone else, unaware of the infidelity that is happening because of it.

Or, we find ourselves in the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Today, a character is enjoying a nice day out at the park, not knowing that yesterday evening, a herd of zombies marched through that same exact location.

Instant alarm bells start ringing for your audience — the apocalypse are upon us, but where did the zombies go? And when are the characters going to find out about this? How are they going to find out?

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that a close family member has already fallen victim to the undead, and now, having been missing for a couple days, is slowly approaching our main character from behind, reanimated as a zombie. The audience has already seen this family member be bitten and turned, but for our main character, it's a different story.

Your audience are emotionally invested in your characters. Use that to your advantage.

To have an audience sit on a piece of information, not knowing how it's going to affect their favorite characters and relationships, can have just as much of an emotional impact as a ''regular'' plot twist.

"There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

― Alfred Hitchcock

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

I feel bad. I owed him ten dollars…

Something that kind of upset me in the show a little was how the Townes guy was made to be the supposed love of Beth’s life when in the novel it’s Jolene???? Whenever Beth sees a woman that she thinks is beautiful she associates her with Jolene. Jolene the person who she says she feels most comfortable with, even more than her mother. I mean Beth even thinks about how she wants to tell her she loves her but they completely ignored that part of their relationship :(

reasons vol. 2 makes me really believe the duffers are just bad at writing characters

mike wheeler. now they have mike be super caring about will in s1 & s2 only in s3 to have be suddenly be kind of a dick. this would have made a lot of sense if mike was meant to be written as queer. but obviously he wasn’t. he was just a dick for zero reason at all. also fuck them for making mike say that he doesn’t think his life really started till he meet el. that’s so fucking stupid.

will byers- here’s the thing with will, they seem to not know what to do with him if he’s not being affected by the upside down. they just seem to make him sad but he loves his friends so he’s gonna support them! they don’t know wtf he would be like if he’s not sad and suffering so they just make him sad and suffer.

eddie munson- eddie was great character this season. like he fit right into the groups dynamic and him steve robin and nancy were a super fun group. but the duffers refuse to touch the main cast even if it would make sense for those characters to die. how did him dying help? how was that in anyway a good way to end his story? what they killed hik just because they couldn’t think of a way to clear his name? honestly wouldn’t be surprised!

steve harrington- they jsut don’t know wtf to do with steve if he doesn’t have a love interest. i thought part of steve’s develop would be realizing that he don’t need romantic love in his life all the time. that he can still be loved by his friends but no. once again the you need a love interest to be happy trope!

them making lucas, the one black person in the party, join basketball even if he’s showed zero interest in it before

them having robin’s, the one explicitly queer character, love interest be a side character that we get to know basically nothing about

nancy staring at steve and having multiple scenes where it looks like they might kiss and have her cheat on jonathan even though s3 made it seem like nancy and steve didn’t have feelings for each other anymore