We all have moments where our creativity has failed us. Maybe we had an idea, but the words wouldn’t come. Or when they did, they felt stilted, awful. We feel alone and isolated in this because we are writers. The words are supposed to flow from our fingers like water down the Columbia River.
Some people call this writers’ block. I think of it as a temporary lull in my creativity.
I have learned to write my way through these dry spells. Usually, the work I produce at that moment is awful, and I wouldn’t share it with anyone. But I am a professional writer and the act of writing every day keeps me fit and in the habit of working.
Writing is like participating in sports or playing a musical instrument. We must practice if we want to be good at it. Doing well at writing requires some discipline on our part. I lose my momentum and purpose when I stop writing for any reason.
I lose my passion for my work.
At times, we come to a place where we can’t think of what to write. It happens to everyone, and we each handle it differently. I will share how I deal with lulls in creativity—and I know it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Before we begin, I suggest you save the file you are working on, the one you can’t seem to make headway on. Close it, and delete nothing. You will be able to use this work later, so file it properly.
Sometimes, the problem is that your mind has seen a shiny thing, a different project that wants to be written, and you can’t focus on the job at hand. If that is the case, work on the project that is on your mind. Let that creative energy flow, and you can reconnect with the first project once the new project is out of the way.
For me, writer’s block manifests not as a block per se. It will appear as an inability to visualize a scene I must write to advance a story. If I can’t picture it, I can’t describe it.
That can be quite frustrating.
Unfortunately, some people have a different experience, one where they have no words whatsoever. They try, they struggle, and nothing comes to them.
This creates a kind of trauma. Once a person has experienced that moment of complete inability, fear of being unable to write can magnify the problem until it paralyzes them.
So what do I do when the words don’t come?
First, I open a new document. At the top of this document, I type: Where I Am Today.
- I look around myself and see the room I am in, trying to see it with a stranger’s eyes.
- I briefly describe what the stranger might see on entering that room.
- Then I describe how I feel sitting in that place at that moment in time.
I write two or three paragraphs just to prove I can do it.
Next, I go somewhere else and take my notebook. I am a stranger there, so I write three more paragraphs detailing how I fit into that new space and how it makes me feel.
You could do this at the mall, a coffee shop, or the parking lot at the supermarket.
Me writing in a Seattle Starbucks, taken through a fish tank. I was the big fish in that tank! Photo by Dan Riffero.
The last exercise is more abstract: Where do I want to be? I visualize it and describe my imaginary scene as if I am looking at it.
I want to walk along the high-tide mark on a foggy beach. I want to hear the gulls and the waves. I want to feel at peace again.
It’s weird but writing about nothing in particular is like doodling. It is a form of mind wandering. It can jar your creative mind loose. With perseverance, you will be writing your other work again.
Everyone has family, jobs, and external demands that limit their writing time. Sometimes the world gets in the way of writing. We might feel unwell or have too many things to accomplish and not enough time to get it all done.
In my real life, getting our house ready to put on the market saps my creativity, but I am muddling along. Boxes here and there, getting rid of this and that—it’s exhausting. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to write.
But I sit down and get at least 100 words on paper just to prove I can. That usually leads to a more productive writing session.
The most important thing is to care for my family first. Sometimes just doing laundry can jar an idea loose, and I feel incredibly productive at the same time.
However, when I am stuck for words to write, the most important thing I do is to sit somewhere quiet and let my mind wander.
Daydreaming is good for you. It boosts the brain, making our thought process more effective. Apparently, letting the mind wander allows a kind of ‘default neural network’ to engage when our brain is at wakeful rest, like in meditation, unlike when it’s actively focused on the outside world.
When we daydream, our brain is free to process tasks more effectively.
This is good to know because I spend an astounding amount of time daydreaming, and I would hate to be simply wasting time.
This is how my mind works. I hope that what works for me will work for you. Remember, if you are suffering from a temporary dry spell, you are not alone. We all go through those times.
When you want to talk about it, you will find friends here.
When I begin writing a first draft, I try to approach writing each scene as if I were shooting a movie. We know that each conversation is an event that must advance the story, but it must also give us glimpses of who each person is.
Having the fundamentals of the conversation to work with sharpens the scene in my mind, enabling me to frame it properly. Once I know what they are talking about and have the rudimentary dialogue straight, I add the scenery. Then, I insert the props and add the speech tags. The interaction grows, shedding more light on their relationship.
My above sample is not perfect, as it is from the first draft of a short story I never actually finished, but you get the idea. We learn more about the characters’ relationship with each other and see their place in this environment. The layers that form this scene are:
Set dressing (the props you place in the scene) shows the immediate environment. Having characters interact with props provides opportunities to insert hints that a deeper backstory exists. However, only have them interact with props that are organic or crucial to the story. This eliminates the problem of 
By beginning with the conversation and envisioning each scene as if I were filming a movie, I can flesh it out and show everything the reader needs to hang their imagination on. The reader’s mind will supply the details of the immediate setting depending on the clues I give.
Every writer knows the backstory is what tells us who the characters are as people and why they’re the way they are. At the beginning of our career, it seems logical to inform the reader of that history upfront. “Before you can understand that, you need to know this.”
But knowing this and putting it into action are two different things.
Be aware: if you are writing from an omniscient POV, this can be tricky and lead to “
Romance novels average 50,000 to 70,000 words. In shorter novels, there is no room for sweeping, epic backstories. Instead, information and backstory are meted out only as needed through conversations and internal dialogue/introspection.
Even with all the effort I apply to it, my editor will find things that don’t matter. She will gently take a metaphorical axe to it, highlighting that which doesn’t advance the story or add to the intrigue.
In many thrillers and cyberpunk novels, the faceless behemoth of corporate greed is the overarching antagonist. It can be represented by characters who are portrayed as utterly committed to doing their job and loyal to their employer. In many cyberpunk novels, the antagonists tend to be goons-in-suits, enforcers who work for the corporation.
Level 7 is a 1959 science fiction novel by the Ukrainian-born Israeli writer 
This type of psychopathic antagonist is explored exceedingly well in George Saunders’ brilliant sci-fi short story, 
When evil is a behemoth on the order of a mega-corporation or a military coup, the villains who represent it all have reasons for their loyalty. They’re like the hero; they care intensely, obsessively about something or someone. They have logical motives for supporting what we are portraying as the enemy. Our job as authors is to make those deeply held justifications the driving force behind their story.
Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)
Volume control is a crucial part of the overall pacing of your story. “Loud” deafens us and loses its power when it’s the only sound. However, like the opening movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, the entire range of volume can be effectively used to create a masterpiece.
Dark emotions, such as depression, can be shown through a character’s reactions to things that once pleased them. Perhaps they no longer find beauty in the things they once enjoyed.
Visceral reactions are involuntary—we can’t stop our face from flushing or our heart from pounding. We can pretend it didn’t happen or hide it, but we can’t stop it. An internal physical gut reaction is difficult to convey without offering the reader some information, a framework to hang the image on.
Conflict keeps the protagonist from achieving their goals. Significant conflicts and emotions are easy to write about. But in real life, our smaller, more internal conflicts frequently create more significant roadblocks to success than any antagonist might present.
In real life, we are drawn to certain people and get to know them better through conversations.
Good conversations and mental dialogues bring written characters to life and turn them into people we want to know, our closest friends.
Internal dialogues (rambling thoughts) are often a thinly disguised info dump in my first drafts. I seek those out in the second draft and either cut them to a line or two or eliminate them entirely. I try to avoid italics if possible, so this is how I write thoughts nowadays:
However, I have no problem understanding an accent and visualizing a character as foreign when the author consistently uses one or two well-known words that a non-native speaker might use, such as si, ja, or oui, in place of yes. Most English speakers recognize and know the meaning of these words when they see them. All it takes is a straightforward word to convey the proper foreign flavor.
The laws of grammar sometimes break down on the quantum level in conversations with our friends. This is also true of written exchanges.
Rule 3: Commas—Do not place a period between the closed quotes and the dialogue tag. Use a comma because when the speech tag follows the spoken words, they are one sentence consisting of clauses separated by a comma: “I’m here,” he said.
Conversations, both spoken and internal, light up and illuminate the individual corners of the story, bringing the immensity of the overall story arc down to a personal level.
In his book, 
Batman is a 
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the 
No matter what genre we write in, when we design the story, we build it around a need that must be fulfilled, a quest of some sort.
I recently had a manuscript undergo a complete change from what I originally planned. The original antagonist had such an engaging story that he had become more important to me than the protagonists.
As a reader, I dislike discovering the author is at a loss as to what their protagonist wants. Without that impetus, they don’t have a good reason for the villain to be there either. Random events inserted to keep things interesting don’t advance the story, but motivation does.
You’ve taken them through two revisions and think these characters are awesome, perfectly drawn as you intend. The overall theme of the narrative supports the plot arc, and the events are timed perfectly, so the pacing is good.
But in real life, I often find little distinction between heroes and villains. Heroes are often jackasses who need to be taken down a notch. Villains will extort protection money from a store owner and then turn around and open a soup kitchen to feed the unemployed.
Both heroes and villains must have possibilities – the chance that the villain might be redeemed, or the hero might become the villain. As an avid gamer, I think of this as the “
In Final Fantasy VII, the 1997 game that started it all, we meet Cloud Strife, a mercenary with a mysterious past. Gradually, we discover that, unbeknownst to himself, he is living a lie that he must face and overcome to be the hero we all need him to be.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 