It doesn’t matter whether you’re a meticulous plotter or a clueless-until-it-leaves-your-fingertips Pantser–somewhere along the line you’re going to hit the tall, broad, barbed wire and broken glass topped wall of writer’s block with a plot – either in the planning stage or in the execution, the actual writing of the story. Unless you’re writing westerns, and then it might be like riding into the Grand Canyon, having your horse break his leg and need to be put down, and not having a boat to get passed the rapids or the rock climbing gear or experience to scale the canyon walls.
In other words, you’re stuck. 60 WAYS TO PLOT OR DODGE WRITER'S BLOCK is a cure.
The longer the word count in a tale, the more often those troublesome spots poof into being. That’s when the story you loved begins to be referred to as “the book from Hell”. Oddly enough, nearly every book that has turned out extremely well for me (in that I’m proud of it) has carried that moniker for weeks on end.
I’ve read a lot of books on how to plot, on how to avoid writer’s block – not a one helped me do so. I’ve listened at conferences as writers talked about fool-proof plotting and how to side-step writer’s block–nada bit of help either. So I dreamed up my own ways around, over or under those seemingly unscalable walls that stopped my imagination cold.
Not all of them work every single time, which is why there are 60 of them presented here. Sometimes they aren’t all that different, though the mental picture painted (or physical manifestation suggested, in some cases) changes slightly. An alteration in the idea generating venue can turn the trick. Often enough one of these allowed me to mentally pole vault over whatever was holding progress up in one book and then slammed me against the unyielding surface of that writer’s block wall in another manuscript. I work my way through them because if one doesn’t work, another will reignite the story and get it moving forward again.
I’ll warn you, a few, at first glance, sound really silly. But they work. Not just for me, but for other writers in my workshops. You don’t have to keep them in these formats but can morph them, adjust them as best suits your writing style. Dump ones that don’t appeal to you. But for the sake of experimentation, take each out for a test drive. If you find the seat is too high, too wide, too straight, the steering wheel too small, too big, too unwieldly, and the upholstery squeaks when you move, head on to the next model and kick the tires, try the sunroof and fiddle with the air conditioning controls. If you take it out on the road and run into trouble, call OnStar–or the equivalent, which is try a different way to modify your story generating adventure. Mix things up. In the end, doing so will probably work better than OnStar.
Buckle your test helmet in place and let’s dive in!
Among the “ploys” you’ll find: 2 types of freewrites, road maps, storyboarding, solar systems, interviews with characters, dominoes, dice, and cards, the Perils of Pauline, a Blind Librarian, a Berserker, characters with issues, cat burglars, and more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Beth Daniels, as Beth Henderson, is the author of 29 and counting historical romantic adventures and romantic comedies, many of which have snagged 5* reviews on Amazon. She has also dipped her quill into the mystery/Alternative History and urban fantasy niches as J. B. Dane. She holds a BA in American History with a minor in British Modern History and a MA in English Composition and Rhetoric with an Emphasis in Creative Writing.
After presiding over seventy various online workshops about writing fiction, most of them at SavvyAuthors.com and various online Romance Writers of America chapters, she began retiring the workshops, turning them into the various Fiction Writing Aid Workshops in Book Form titles. 60 WAYS TO PLOT OR DODGE WRITER'S BLOCK is the 17th title to begin life in the workshop world. Visit at Muse2Ms.com.
In other words, you’re stuck. 60 WAYS TO PLOT OR DODGE WRITER'S BLOCK is a cure.
The longer the word count in a tale, the more often those troublesome spots poof into being. That’s when the story you loved begins to be referred to as “the book from Hell”. Oddly enough, nearly every book that has turned out extremely well for me (in that I’m proud of it) has carried that moniker for weeks on end.
I’ve read a lot of books on how to plot, on how to avoid writer’s block – not a one helped me do so. I’ve listened at conferences as writers talked about fool-proof plotting and how to side-step writer’s block–nada bit of help either. So I dreamed up my own ways around, over or under those seemingly unscalable walls that stopped my imagination cold.
Not all of them work every single time, which is why there are 60 of them presented here. Sometimes they aren’t all that different, though the mental picture painted (or physical manifestation suggested, in some cases) changes slightly. An alteration in the idea generating venue can turn the trick. Often enough one of these allowed me to mentally pole vault over whatever was holding progress up in one book and then slammed me against the unyielding surface of that writer’s block wall in another manuscript. I work my way through them because if one doesn’t work, another will reignite the story and get it moving forward again.
I’ll warn you, a few, at first glance, sound really silly. But they work. Not just for me, but for other writers in my workshops. You don’t have to keep them in these formats but can morph them, adjust them as best suits your writing style. Dump ones that don’t appeal to you. But for the sake of experimentation, take each out for a test drive. If you find the seat is too high, too wide, too straight, the steering wheel too small, too big, too unwieldly, and the upholstery squeaks when you move, head on to the next model and kick the tires, try the sunroof and fiddle with the air conditioning controls. If you take it out on the road and run into trouble, call OnStar–or the equivalent, which is try a different way to modify your story generating adventure. Mix things up. In the end, doing so will probably work better than OnStar.
Buckle your test helmet in place and let’s dive in!
Among the “ploys” you’ll find: 2 types of freewrites, road maps, storyboarding, solar systems, interviews with characters, dominoes, dice, and cards, the Perils of Pauline, a Blind Librarian, a Berserker, characters with issues, cat burglars, and more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Beth Daniels, as Beth Henderson, is the author of 29 and counting historical romantic adventures and romantic comedies, many of which have snagged 5* reviews on Amazon. She has also dipped her quill into the mystery/Alternative History and urban fantasy niches as J. B. Dane. She holds a BA in American History with a minor in British Modern History and a MA in English Composition and Rhetoric with an Emphasis in Creative Writing.
After presiding over seventy various online workshops about writing fiction, most of them at SavvyAuthors.com and various online Romance Writers of America chapters, she began retiring the workshops, turning them into the various Fiction Writing Aid Workshops in Book Form titles. 60 WAYS TO PLOT OR DODGE WRITER'S BLOCK is the 17th title to begin life in the workshop world. Visit at Muse2Ms.com.
