There are hundreds of books out there telling people how to begin a story, what to do when you have a blank page in fornt of you. But to tell you my opintion, the blank page is the easiest part of the whole writing process. You don't have to worry about if your voice is the same through out the piece, you don't have to worry about if what your character said goes with their personality and you don't have to worry about tone or little details about characters, events, etc that has already happen. But what do you do when you're mid-story and even through you know your ending you just don't know how to connect the dots?
Yeah, Natalie Goldberg suggest stepping aside and getting a big glass of water and thinking about it. Stephen King goes on long walks. But really that's the only advice I've received on this little problem... until I read What If? A great little book. One of the authors points out that most writers-block is due to either not having enough information, just plain old confidence issues, or you just don't know what happens next. If you're having problems with the last one, the book suggest that when you get stuck think of three ways to get out of the scene or problem. For example, say your main child hero just stole candy from the store. What are some ways to move the scene forward
a.) the clerk catches him and they have a conflict.
b.) our hero's starts feeling bad about stealing the candy and tries to return it.
c) our hero doesn't get catch and this starts his life of crime.
write on each path for at least 10 minute and see which one jumps out at you. so brush off some dust on an old scene and see if this method works for you.
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