Saturday 14 March 2020

Keep Writing Even When It's Difficult #ChaBooCha

Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay

We are finishing up with the second week of writing and moving into our third week now. Writing your story might be getting trickier for you now as you begin to write out the middle of your story. Many writers find this part of writing difficult because the freshness and excitement of starting a new story has passed and they now are having to build more of the flesh of the story.

What happens if you get stuck once you reach the middle of your story? How can you get past this?

One way to help you keep going as you reach the middle of your story is to take a short break. Go out for a walk in nature. Visit someone you haven't seen in a while. Go to a park with your family or a local concert. Do something that takes your mind off of your story, just for a little while, and it can have the effect of refreshing your mind and spirit enough to boost your creativity when you return to your writing.

Another act that can help with your writing when you get to this part of writing your story is to talk about it with someone else. Do you have a friend who writes or reads a lot? Or do you have a partner who will listen as you discuss your story and where you want to go with it? Sometimes just talking about it can help give your muse a fresh injection of ideas. And sometimes, if the person you are talking to tries to brainstorm ideas with you, you can come up with new and novel ways of writing your next scene. I found that, even when I didn't use any of the suggestions someone else gave me, just the fact that I talked about it with them and they tried to help with some of their own ideas helped inspire me with new ideas of my own.

Another way to help bring you fresh ideas for your story is to write a separate scene for one of your characters. This scene should be a scene that will not be included in the finished story and probably should have nothing to do with the story itself, but it can be a slice of life or some sort of event that happened in your character's past. Sometimes, just writing out this seemingly useless piece of background can help inspire new ideas for that character, either for their motivation or for something that will happen later in the story.

You can also try and get into the mind of your main protagonist or your antagonist. Answer some questions about them and write the answers down. What are they most worried about right now? What motivates them the most? What bad habits are they struggling to overcome? What do they fear the most? Maybe you can come up with even more interesting questions to ask your characters.

Good luck with your writing as you continue your stories.

Happy writing!

5 comments:

  1. Great advice. When I get stuck I like writing a scene where there's a surprise birthday party being given for my MC. Then I ask all kinds of questions - what type of cake, what gifts are given, who is there, my MCs reaction/feelings etc. It helps me to get to know my MC better even though none of it goes into my story.

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  2. Great ideas! Similar to your last paragraph, I sometimes choose a character and write a long diary entry, by hand, as that character. Sometimes I do this for several characters, until I feel ready to write again.

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  3. As we sequester ourselves for the next few wks, I am planning to write a ton & revise even more. I esp like the idea of writing a "background" scene to explore my character's reactions. Thank you!

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  4. Good questions to keep asking throughout my ms. I find that conveying how my MC feels on every page is tricky. Keep rolling everyone!

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  5. Great advice, Becky! When I get stuck I always head outside, whether it’s for a walk in the woods or just sitting in my chair with my eyes closed and my ears open, listening to everything that is happening around me.

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