Tag Archives: Tools

Understanding your own Writer’s Block

Craft & Skills Frank Morin Writing Tools 5 Comments

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about lately, and is similar to the recent post from Kylie on Unleashing the Muse

Although the topics are similar, I’m taking a slightly different approach so hopefully it won’t seem like overkill.

I recently watched the movie “Stranger Than Fiction” with Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.  Very funny.  Emma Thompson is a novelist who kills her heroes, and somehow Will Ferrell becomes her next character and can hear her voice as she types and prepares to kill him.  Fascinating concept, moreso for the fact that Emma Thompson can’t quite figure out the right way to kill off Will Ferrell.  She gives a brilliant portrayal of a less-than-stable author suffering from writer’s block.  She goes to some amazing extremes in her attempt to get the right idea.

The following clip shows just how far she’ll go:  to an emergency room to view injured and dying patients to get real-life inspiration.

Stranger Than Fiction clip – Writers Block

As the clip so wonderfully portrays, some writers struggle mightily with writer’s block.

Do you?

What do you do about it?

I don’t suffer from writer’s block very often.  I spend lots of time in the early stages of story creation planning, considering different ideas, and fleshing out exactly what I want to achieve with the scenes, the characters.  Once that basic framework is nailed down, the actual writing of the story is pretty straight-forward.  The big exception is if a new, unexpected idea hits me while I’m writing a scene.

So am I just lucky?  Inspired?  Or do I not push the envelope far enough?

I believe that many times writer’s block is a symptom of one of these deeper problems:

  • Lack of clarity of a story’s mission or concept
  • Lack of understanding of the correct plot framework the story needs to build upon
  • Incomplete worldbuilding
  • Weak or inconsistent conflict
  • Trying to force a story down a direction that just doesn’t work, which the author may understand at an instinctive level, but lacks enough mastery of the craft to consciously identify the shortcoming and therefore begin the process of correction.

When have you run into writer’s block?  Is it at a particular phase in a story every time, or does it happen at random intervals?  How do you find ways around it?

As mentioned in Kylie’s previous post, one approach that often helps is the BIC_HOK (Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard) approach:  force yourself to work, to type, to drive yourself into “the zone’.   This actually works for me.  Sometimes playing the right music as I try to get into “the zone’ helps a lot.

Another way to help explore options is playing the “What If?” game.   Back up to the last part that worked in the story before you hit the snag that’s holding you up and start asking “What if?”.  Search for the most surprising, craziest possible twists you could add.  Or look at the scene and consider if anything similar has ever been done before, and then ask “What If?” you took the opposite track?

The worst thing you can do is just give up and say “I’ll write tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll feel like it then.”  ;or blame it on a Muse that just isn’t talking today.

 

‘Tis But A Scratch!

Jason Michelsen The Writing Life Writing Tools 1 Comment
Cartoon Credit: Joe Sutliff, after Monty Python and the Holy Grail

As speculative fiction writers, we often find ourselves doing a lot of research. Much of that research goes into worldbuilding, pulling from this or that culture, borrowing this or that religious ritual. Every nation in my own world has roots in more than one ancient culture from our past, just enough familiarity to give the reader a solid frame of reference. And while everyone pretty much knows where to go to do that particular kind of research, I’ve come across a couple books recently that have helped me tremendously with the authenticity of other areas of my writing.

I write Epic/Heroic Fantasy of an adult nature.  It’s violent.  It’s bloody.  People get hurt, injured, maimed, disfigured, etc. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – I don’t get to observe people who have been injured on a daily basis. Aside from TV and pictures, I’ve only seen one dead body outside of a funeral home in my entire life, but I want my books to feel real. I want the injuries that occur to feel real, the consequences to feel real.

Recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Body Trauma: A Writer’s Guide to Wounds and Injuries by David W. Page, M.D. While the book does spend a good amount of time dealing with injuries caused by modern weapons, much of the information can be applied to ancient warfare. The chapter on abdominal trauma alone is worth the price of the book. I mean seriously, how many people will I run through with swords in my writing career? Probably one or two. There’s a chapter dealing with injuries to just about every body part with special chapters dealing with impalement, amputation, bug bites, frostbite and much much more. It’s a must have for any writer planning on hurting one of his characters.

Another book I’ve turned to on a number of occasions is Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor. I originally bought it as a research book for a huge siege set piece I have planned for a future book, but I’ve used it two other times to come up with devious methods of attack. It has information on everything from ancient flamethrowers to poison gases to incendiary bombs. Nothing pleasant, but all pleasantly helpful to anyone writing violent fiction.

And on a less “violent” note, I thought I’d bring up a book that some might never think to read if they’re interested in writing speculative fiction.  Robert McKee is a name widely known in Hollywood, but maybe not so much in the SFF community. He’s a screenwriter of some renown, and his book Story is one that anyone interested in telling stories should read. While it claims to be a book on screenwriting – and was indeed the required text for one of my classes in film school – it is so much more. McKee breaks storytelling down into the most basic elements, providing examples and showing how and why some elements work and others do not. I try to read Story at least once every 2-3 years. Not only is it educational, it is inspirational.

I hope these book recommendations prove helpful to someone out there. If anyone has any other books of this nature that they use regularly, feel free to post them in the comments section. I for one am always looking to expand my research library.

 

Monday Bonus: Scrivener for PC

Jason Michelsen Writing Tools 4 Comments

I contemplated merely commenting on Matt’s 4/18/11 post regarding the Writer’s Software Arsenal, but thought this info might have been lost or overlooked as a comment. And, since Colette already posted a wonderful article today on learning from our mistakes, consider this Bonus Monday Content!

Many Mac users might already be familiar with Scrivener, but as a PC user, I had never heard of it. Most likely because, until now, it hadn’t been available for the PC. Scrivener is currently conducting a public beta test of the PC version which you can download here. I decided to give it a try and have been extremely impressed despite the bugs I’ve come across.

“Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents.”

The program has built in templates for Fiction Novels, Novels with Parts, Short Stories, Non-fiction, Poetry & Lyrics, and Screenplays. You can also create your own template to suit your personal needs.

What is so great about Scrivener, at least from the perspective of a speculative fiction novelist, is that it allows you to have everything you need to write your story–outline, character bios, research, glossary, etc.–all in a single “project.” You can even add images and video which can be viewed while you’re writing, easily rearrange scenes/chapters, and then compile everything into a single document for exporting or printing. As someone who has multiple Word docs (glossary, book guide, etc.) and an outline in Excel open at any given time–I worked in cubicle for 10 years and have yet to spend the time to learn wikidpad, what can I say?–having everything centralized in a single location seems like a dream.

The current Beta test runs through May 30th, 2011, and the full program will be available sometime in June. The PC version will cost $40, which is a steal considering how robust the software is. Additionally, if you participated in November’s NaNoWriMo contest and verified your 50k word count, you get 50% off the PC purchase price. You can’t beat that with a stick!

Scrivener for Mac: (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php)
Scrivener PC Public Beta: (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/)

A Writer’s Software Arsenal

Matt Jones Writing Tools 4 Comments

The enemy of every writer is the same:  the blank page.  We each have different weapons that we use against this common foe, but being a programmer by trade, I tend to use software in my arsenal.  Being my first post, I thought it would be a good idea to list some of the common software tools that many authors, including myself, use.  Just to note, these are all my own personal recommendations and I have not been influenced by their publishers.

The Word Processor

Microsoft Word: ~$149.99 with office. (https://office.microsoft.com)
Openoffice: Free (http://www.openoffice.org/)
Google Docs:  Free (https://docs.google.com/)

A common theme you’ll hear when writers give advice is to use what works best for you.  It doesn’t really matter which word processor you use, as long as you have something you can use to write with.  When you write, you should use something that is familiar to you and lets you work with very little thought on how it goes down on paper.  If the line that appears under misspelled words throws you off your game, disable the feature.  You can always run a spell check at the end.  Just write!

Plotting:

Wikidpad: Free http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/

When I first started plotting my books, I would create a lot of files in Microsoft Word and put my thoughts down there.  As my novels grew larger, my system began to fall apart.  Another author suggested wikidpad to me and it has been a huge time-saver ever since.  It has a small learning curve that takes a little getting used to, but once you’re familiar with it, things begin to fall into place.  As you plot out elements, you can quickly link to other elements and world elements.  This can easily turn a convoluted mess into a well-structured system.  The price is hard to beat as well.

Backup

Dropbox: Free http://www.dropbox.com
Carbonite: $59/year http://www.carbonite.com/

Computer backup services have been around for a while but still tend to go unused by many writers.  Some claim that they don’t want their unpublished works stored somewhere online, while others just haven’t taken the time to set it up.  As with any type of insurance, it’s not a problem until something goes wrong.  I personally keep all my transcripts on dropbox.  The advantages are numerous.  I can access my documents from my home or work.  I can start writing on my desktop at home, and finish from my laptop in a café with no worry of how to transfer it between the two computers.  If I’m at a conference, I can pull out my iPhone and instantly pull up a transcript to show off, or even email to potential agents or publishers.  One other feature I like about Dropbox is that it will keep a revision history.  If you have a bad night and delete half the document in a fit of rage, you can go back and pull up a prior version, restoring the lost chapters.

I will continue to look at other software that may be useful to writers to battle the blank page.  If you have ideas or suggestions, please leave a comment, and I may look at them in future posts.