8 Tips for Overcoming Writing Roadblocks

The dreaded deadline is upon me, but that can be a good thing.  Sometimes writers need to revisit previous ideas about writing.  Here's a favorite post from March 2012:

Writing is a lot like embarking on a journey with an incomplete roadmap.  You think you know where you’re going, but the map doesn’t show the unexpected detours, the places where the road suddenly ends, and the new highway that’s under construction.

Also, you entrust your car (the story) to a driver (your main character), who has a mind of his own, is often distracted by shiny objects on the side of the road, and wants to stop occasionally to take care of bodily functions (sleeping, eating, going to the restroom).

You, the writer, want to keep your story moving forward in a predetermined direction, but the incomplete map and willful driver get in the way, creating writing roadblocks that threaten to derail your story.

It’s enough to make a writer give up on the journey and start over (e.g., rewrite the story from the beginning or start a new story) or even stay home (e.g., give up on writing altogether).

But don’t be hasty.  Sometimes roadblocks take the story in a new and exciting direction.

Writing roadblocks come in many forms.  Sometimes your character is faced with a decision, and you have no idea how she will decide.  Or another, unexpected character shows up, and you don’t know what to do with him.  Or the plot twist you thought was going to be brilliant turns out to be lame.   

What do you do now?

Coming to a writing roadblock is not pleasant, but it can be the best thing to ever happen to your story.  Here are eight tips for working with your roadblock instead of fighting it:

1. Begin with your character. Your character must want something.  What is it?  How important is it that she gets what she wants?  You do not have to determine up front whether or not your character succeeds – the fact that she wants something gives your story purpose and direction.

2. Determine what’s at stake.  What will happen if your character does not get what she wants?  Will she lose her last chance at happiness?  Will the murderer get away?  Will the world come to an end?  Again, you do not have to know up front if your character will win.  You only have to know what will happen if she doesn’t.

3. Be prepared to accept the worst. Writers can hold themselves back if they fail to address this question.  And it is a hard question.  After all, we like to think of our main characters as winners, and much of popular fiction teaches us that the hero always wins.  But doubt and uncertainty can paralyze us as writers if we don’t face the hard questions.

So what if your character loses her last chance at happiness?  What if the murderer gets away?  What if the world comes to an end?  What then?  (And there is always a “What then?” even if the world ends.)

4. Determine the steps your character will take to reach her goal. Once again, you don’t know if she’s going to succeed; you only know what she’s going to do next.

5. Determine the obstacles in your character’s way.  If you’re like me, creating obstacles for your character is tough.  It’s like tripping your own child while he’s carrying a tray full of expensive china across the room.  My advice: Don’t stress too hard in dreaming up obstacles.  Your character will trip on his own at some point, which leads me to . . .

6. When an unexpected roadblock occurs, see it as an opportunity for growth – for both your character and yourself.  This is where you truly test your mettle as a writer.  This is where both you and your character discover hidden strengths.  Just as adversity in the real world can bring out hidden talents, forgotten skills, and surprising character traits in people, so too can roadblocks reveal aspects of your story that keep it fresh and exciting.

7. Keep forging ahead. Go around the roadblock.  Fly over it.  Dig under it.  Heck, it’s your story: drive straight through the roadblock if you wish.  Whatever you do, keep writing.

8. Don’t start over.  If you do, you deprive your character and yourself of a chance to grow.  Instead, have the courage to keep going forward, wherever the story takes you, even if the outcome differs from what you originally expected.

Writing is discovery, but not all discoveries are pleasant.  When a writing roadblock threatens to derail your story, seize it as an opportunity to trust in yourself and in your story.  After all, a roadblock may just make the entire journey worthwhile.

What do you think?  How do you deal with writing roadblocks?

5 Tips to Make Readers Care about Your Character

A member of my writers group recently complimented me on a short story I’m writing. One of her comments stood out: she was pleased that my protagonist is female.

She reminded me that all readers, to one degree or another, like to identify with protagonists. We see ourselves in the characters of a story. When they experience trials, we experience them, too. The hero's victory becomes ours. The insight which changes her life changes ours. 

While reading a story (and perhaps even for a long time after), we become the character.

That isn’t to say readers cannot identify with a character of a different gender (or race, age, faith, time period, etc.). In fact, the best stories transcend boundaries and connect us to the deeper reality of being human.

Still, it's easier to identify with a character who is somehow “like” us.

And this is why the writer should create characters the reader can care about.

Giving readers a character to care about, to root for, to identify with is one of the most basic ingredients of writing fiction. Yet writers sometimes forget this. They become immersed in the Great Idea, the Clever Plot, or the Exotic Setting and neglect to develop their characters.

But flat characters=flat story.

Flat characters often come off as stereotypes. They never grow because they don't come off as real people to begin with.

  

(This is why, in a previous post, I recommended writing a character biography. If your character becomes real to you, he should become real to the reader.)

So, how do you make readers care about your character?  Here are five tips:

•  Show the character doing something good for someone else.  In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Aibilene dotes on the baby daughter of her employer, even though her employer treats Aibilene badly. Aibilene constantly tells the girl, “You is special” so she doesn’t grow up hating herself like her mother did.
• Give your character traits the reader would like to see in herself.  At the beginning of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen comes off as a very independent young woman. She hunts, she’s good with a bow and arrow, she sneaks past the border of her district to provide food for her family.
• Give your character adverse circumstances.  Peter Parker—the future Spider-Man—is the quintessential science nerd: smart, but unpopular with girls and picked on by jocks. Harry Potter is an unloved orphan, abused and neglected by his horrible aunt, uncle, and cousin.
•  Give your character other people who love and care about them.  Peter Parker has his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Katniss has her sister, Primrose, and best friend, Gale Hawthorne. Aibilene has her friend and fellow maid, Minnie.
• Most importantly: Do one or more of the above in the first few pages of your story.  Readers are impatient. If you don’t give them a reason to care immediately, they may put the book down and never pick it back up.

Giving your readers a character to care about is one of the most important things you will ever do in your story. Your hero is our guide through the Great Idea, the Clever Plot, and the Exotic Setting. By all means, be wildly creative in these aspects of your story. But your character is the one we’re going to root for and remember the most.

The Dirty D-Word of Writing

Imagine this: You’re hard at work on your story when a new idea jumps into your head, an idea which takes your new project in a whole new direction. Or an idea for a new project altogether. 

You can’t wait to see where this exciting new idea takes you.  It may even be The One which makes all your dreams come true.

So you stop what you’re working on and dive right in—only to find your new idea's tank has no water.  Or, worse, yet another new idea comes along and steals you away—again.

Ideas are wonderful, but writers who chase ideas risk derailing their projects or never finishing them.

That’s why writers need the dirty D-word—discipline.

If you’re like me, the word discipline conjures negative images of teachers standing over you with rulers, refusing to let you go to recess until you’ve learned your ABC’s.

And that’s unfortunate. Discipline is an indispensable tool for writers. 

Discipline means

•                 you stay focused
•                 you finish the project at hand
•                 you refuse to get sidelined by other projects or concerns
•                 you believe in yourself and your work.

And that’s it. That’s really all discipline entails.

Sure, discipline may include setting a particular time and place to write or observing other rituals. But rituals vary from writer to writer and don’t have to be boring. (My blogging ritual, for example, involves walking to a certain restaurant and writing while eating a good breakfast. But I’m flexible—I do this on either Friday or Saturday.)

Discipline means you say no to your inner child (or inner dreamer or inner critic or whatever metaphor works for you). It’s okay. Your inner child can take it. She may scream and holler and pitch a fit, but she’ll get over it. And she’ll be better equipped to come up with ideas you can use once she realizes you’re serious.

Discipline means you trust the good ideas—the really good ones—won’t get away.  Ideas are like falling in love. The really good ones stick in the back of your mind after the initial excitement wears off.

Discipline means you do the hard work. Let’s face it: Writing is hard. I know, I know . . .writing is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be the thing we do so we don’t have to go out and get real jobs.

But if you hold fast to that attitude, you’ll never do any hard work—at least not without a fast food manager looking over your shoulder.

In writing, discipline means you get to be both manager and employee—but you have to be tough in each role.

Discipline means you finish what you started. Your project doesn’t seem feasible now? It entails tasks you never thought of (such as research, marketing, cover design)? You’ve got so many things going on—children to feed, bills to pay, laundry?

So what? So does every writer who’s ever “made it”. (Read Stephen King’s On Writing or Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’ for first-hand accounts of their struggles to write for a living.)

And your struggle to finish what you started can be a good thing. Overcoming distractions and meeting challenges which lead to growth are what most stories are about. Your personal struggles give you something to write about or add authenticity to what you’ve already written.

Discipline, in other words, helps you do two things: 1) know when an idea is worth pursuing, and 2) realize it.

So, go ahead. Use the dirty D-word. Pass it on.

 How do you discipline yourself as a writer?

Murder Your Words: Be Ruthless in Revision

This is a photo taken of a peer revision comment from a writing class. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his seminal book On Writing, Stephen King advised writers to “kill your darlings.”  A variation I’ve heard is “Murder your children.”

No, we’re not talking about a crime that will land you 25 to life. We’re talking about being utterly ruthless in revising and editing your work.

Any piece of writing becomes the writer’s child: You conceived it, you gave birth to it, you nurtured, clothed and fed it, and you will one day send it out into the world to make you proud. 

But, as any parent knows, sometimes children don’t turn out so well. Good parents, of course, love their children anyway.

Writing, however, is not something you should accept as-is.  Mediocrity breeds antipathy in readers. If you’re not excited about your work, how can you expect the reader to be?

That’s why writers have to become murderers—murderers of their own words.

Sounds extreme?

It is.

I learned this lesson anew when I recently went back and re-read some of the earlier chapters of my novel-in-progress, The Power Club™. The story I had slaved over for months was good—but just good.

Writers, your new mantra: “Good enough is never good enough.”

So I wrote a new version of Chapter 1 and sent it out to my critiquing group. They raved over the improvements, but one member suggested even more drastic changes: cutting out the entire first half of the chapter, beginning the story with the mid chapter break, and filling in the previous information as needed.

My initial reaction?

Drat! More work. I thought this book was finished. I thought this writing gig was supposed to be easy . . .

No, I’m not being hypocritical. Although I said in a previous post that writing never gets easier, it’s perfectly human to have such thoughts. Besides, I didn’t ignore his advice. I gave his suggestion a shot, and I think he’s right:  the new beginning improves the story dramatically. 

Of course, this means other revisions have to be made . . .

But the bottom line is this: I want a book that’s going to set the world on fire, not wallow on the shelves and beg readers to pick it up. Experience has taught me that I don’t remember the struggles that led to self-improvement. What I remember instead are the feelings of pride and accomplshment. What I gain through the effort is self-confidence.

So, go ahead: Murder your words. Killing them makes you and your book stronger.

Related articles

• Revision (emergingwriters.typepad.com)
• Just One More Page, and Then I'll go to Bed (hugs-and-chocolate.com)
• Making Your Revisions Count (theweekendwriter.wordpress.com)
• Write Now and Revise Later, or Right Now, Revise? (theweekendwriter.wordpress.com)

Writers: What to Do When You Feel Uninspired

Image via Wikipedia

It’s been one of those weeks when, as a writer, you feel like you’ve been banged up and put away.

Your confidence is sagging.  A story isn’t working out the way you want it to.  A friendly discussion with an acquaintance has turned into a vitriolic debate.  Your students give you feedback that your teaching style (which you’ve been using for the last several semesters) isn’t working.  And “real life” obligations remind you there are things your writing can’t “cure”.

And now you’ve got to sit down at the keyboard and actually write something.

So what do you do when your inspiration runs low like the battery on your cellphone?

First, realize that writing has little, if anything, to do with inspiration.

That’s right.  Writing is a job, like any other.  Whoever heard of fireman’s block?  What would happen if a doctor didn’t feel “inspired” to help her patients?

Yet writers often feel they need to receive some sort of magical stimulation in order to do their work.

While writing can be stimulating, those of us who wish to get some compensation and recognition for our work must realize that neither will come if we wait for that magical creature called Inspiration to smile upon us.

As someone in my grad school once said, “Writers write.”

Period.

Second, here are four methods for kick-starting your inspiration:

Write through the problem.  Start by writing about the problem.  Acknowledge that you're having difficulty.  

Knowing that I’ve got to be somewhere else this afternoon and that my writing time is limited, I woke up this morning without a clue what I was going to write about.  So I took pen in hand and began writing about how my week went – including the difficulty of writing. 

Voila!  This method produced the post you are now reading.

Don’t wait for inspiration – seize it!  You are the commander of your writing “troops” and this is war!  Take action.  Now.

Get angry.  Nothing provokes a writer to action better than getting angry.  Anger leads to passion, and passion makes you want to do something.  

Can’t find anything to get angry about?  Turn on the news. 

Take your muse to breakfast (or lunch or dinner).   In his seminal book On Writing, Stephen King says his imaginary muse is a man.  Mine’s a woman.  Every week, my muse and I trek to a local restaurant, eat breakfast, and write.  (No, I don’t order for two.)

This particular restaurant is a little pricey for my tastes, but my muse likes to be treated right – and it works.  Many of these blogposts for the last two or three months have originated while my muse and I were munching on eggs, fruit, and Canadian bacon.

If it sounds a little odd to date your muse, deal with it.

Indulge your muse, and your muse will indulge you.

But does indulging your muse produce good results?  You be the judge.  (I will tell you that January was this blog’s best month so far, at least in terms of page views.) 

The old saw says that writing is 90 percent persperation and 10 percent inspiration.  If you wait for that 10 percent to come, you’ll slog through your writing until it loses interest for you, let alone your readers. 

To borrow from Admiral David Farragut, I say, “Damn the inspiration!  Full speed ahead!”

Leave a comment.  How do you kick-start your inspiration?

5 Tips for Dealing with That Difficult Reader

Image by aramolara via Flickr

When people read your story and tell you it's wonderful, they make you feel like you're soaring through the stratosphere.  But then THAT reader comes along.

You know THAT reader.  He's the one who tells you your story is good, BUT . . .  Or she listens patiently while you explain some aspect of your story and then trips you up with your own words.  ("That's not what I got out of your story!")

Sometimes, THAT reader does it to be mean.  More often, though, he genuinely cares about your story and is perplexed by something — something which didn't ring true to him or which left him confused about a character's motivation.  Sometimes, his questions feel like an interrogation and make you want to lawyer up. ("I'm not saying anything further until my character seeks counsel!")

So, how do you deal with THAT reader?

For me, I start by reminding myself that I don't have to win every argument.  I don't even have to participate in every argument put before me.

This simple technique can help you, as an author, preserve your sanity.  It acknowledges that everything you write reflects your opinions, views, and ideas.  These things come from deep within you and were formed by some combination of your life experiences, beliefs, values, assumptions, and even prejudices — all of which are unique to you.  This means your ideas can be flawed, even though you may not be aware of it.

But the reader also has his own ideas, which come from his own life experiences, etc., and may also be flawed.  Perhaps this is why he reacted so oddly to your story.  Or perhaps his ideas — and yours — aren't really flawed.  Perhaps they're just different.

As the author, your options when confronted by THAT reader are few.  You can attempt to set her straight by arguing your point of view.  You can dismiss her opinions as belonging to someone who just didn't "get it."

Or you can adopt a different attitude by following these tips:

1. Respect the reader's intent.  Particularly if the reader is a peer editor or beta reader, all feedback is good.

2. Listen with your mind blank.  This is difficult to do when we feel our work is being attacked.  Our normal response is to become defensive and start formulating a rebuttal.  But if we're focusing on what we're going to say, we are probably missing or misunderstanding what the reader is saying.  This means we may overlook a suggestion or insight which can improve the story.

3. Choose not to see the reader's comments as an attack.  Again, this is difficult, particularly if the reader comes across as an attacker or interrogator.  However, you are always in control of how you respond.

4. Smile and nod.  Affirmative body language does not have to mean you agree with the reader; it can mean you understand what he is saying.

5. After your emotions have died down, carefully consider the content — not the presentation — of the reader's words.  

• Content is the substance of what is being said ("The ending of your story lacks dramatic punch").
• Presentation is the delivery of the content ("How could you take me on this wonderful ride and leave me hanging???").

Separating content from presentation helps you see where the reader may have a point.  It also helps you avoid the feeling that she is winning and you are losing.

Dealing with THAT reader can be uncomfortable, but buried deep within his seemingly hurtful questions and comments may be nuggets of wisdom.  Getting to those nuggets takes patience and a willingness to put our own egos aside.   However, anything that helps us improve as writers is worth the effort.

Related articles

• The Power of Criticism (jhardyb.wordpress.com)
• Writing Tips Wednesday - Accepting Criticism (davefarmersblog.wordpress.com)