Getting writer’s block sucks, but the first step in un-clogging yourself is to figure out which kind of writer’s block you have.
There are three main types of writer’s block:
1) No ideas. You don’t know what to write in the FIRST PLACE.
2) No start. You have an idea but don’t know how to START.
3) No momentum. You’ve written part of it but don’t know how to CONTINUE.
Once you’ve identified your type of writer’s block, it’s time for the next step: fixing it.
Four ways to overcome writer’s block:
1) Make an outline. Having a map of your story can help guide you.
2) Do something else to take your mind off it. Your subconscious may surprise you.
3) Skip ahead and write a scene that you DO know.
4) Just write ANYTHING, literally anything at all.
If you’re having type 1 writer’s block (no ideas), then give #2 or #4 a try.
If you’re having type 2 writer’s block (no start), then try out #1 or #3.
And if you’re having type 3 writer’s block (no momentum), then any of them could work, but #3 or #4 might be best.
For our writing exercise, we induced writer’s block on ourselves to show how to overcome it. Chat voted for a story idea, and then we wrote the beginning, stopping once we didn’t know where to go next and got “writer’s block.” At that point, we got a randomly-generated sentence from online, and we were forced to use that as the next sentence.
This shows how writing anything, literally anything at all — even a random sentence, can be helpful in un-clogging writer’s block.
After we wrote a bit more of the story, we stopped when we got “writer’s block” again, and got another random sentence as our ending sentence. We had to write toward it, knowing our story would end with it.
I’m really happy with how our story ended up.
You can watch the process here, or scroll down below to just read the story.
Story idea chat voted for: Over the last month all the occult shops, fortune tellers, and edgy book stores in your city have closed, with their owners moving away.
They say that animals are more in tune with nature than we are. If you’re ever outside, going for a hike or camping, and then suddenly hear screams from the forest, birds clambering to fly away, or herds of squirrels all scurrying in the same direction, then chances are you should high-tail it out of there too.
And the same goes for magic shops.
All stores that have to do with the occult, everything from fortune tellers, to new age stores, to even novelty places like Spencer’s Gifts, they’re usually run by people more in tune with the supernatural than us. When their shops close down, and they start to run away en masse, it’d be best to follow them. Unless you want to come face to face with whatever it is they were fleeing from.
“We need to rent a room for our party.” (This was our first randomly-generated sentence.)
My girlfriend Lola was sitting across from me at our apartment kitchen table, scrolling through her phone and tapping a pen against her lips. We we trying to set up a location for our upcoming Halloween party. Lola had the idea of renting out an occult shop to make it more spooky and authentic, which was fine with me because that meant no spilled drinks or crumbs in our apartment.
The only issue was that every place we’d tried so far was either closed, going to close, or never picked up
“I don’t get it,” Lola said. “Why are all these place closing before Halloween? This should be like their most popular time of year, right?”
I shrugged. “Maybe Halloween is just not as popular as it was anymore. Going door to door to strangers’ houses and getting random candy just doesn’t give the same high to the kids as getting Instagram likes.”
Lola ignored me and kept scrolling through her phone, scrunching up her eyes in frustration, until she popped them open with a smile on her face.
“Oh! Look at this one.” She showed me her phone screen. It was a picture of a run-down magic supplies warehouse. There was rust on the doors, the outside walls were painted with faded ghosts and witches, and the grass surrounding it was brown. There was only a single red car in the giant parking lot in front of it.
“Doesn’t even look like it has a phone number to call,” I said, looking the information up and down. Lola pulled the phone away from me, beaming from ear to ear.
“Let’s go and check it out,” she said. “Maybe if they’re out of business too, then they can rent the place to us for super cheap.”
I groaned and rocked my head from side to side, but before I knew it Lola had grabbed my arm and I was in the car as she drove us to the outskirts of town. When we arrived at the warehouse, we were the only ones on the road. We pulled into the parking lot, and I noticed that it still only had the same red car as the picture I’d seen before.
Lola practically was bouncing with excitement as we crunched our way through the gravel right up to the giant metal garage door. The left side had a faded image of a ghost saying “boo!” and the right side had a cracked and peeling painting of a witch stirring a bubbling cauldron.
“This is perfect,” Lola said, staring in awe at the building. “It’s so gnarly. I love it!”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. Ever since we’d arrived, I’d just had a weird feeling about the building. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and I wasn’t going to stop Lola when she was so excited, especially when I didn’t even have a real reason to.
“Let’s see if they’re open,” Lola said. She crouched down to the handle on the garage door, and to my surprise, pulled it up with ease. The door slid all the way open to the ceiling, letting sunlight flood into the warehouse and revealing the insides.
What I saw made my heart stop in terror.
(At this point we stopped and got the randomly-generated sentence that would end our story.)
Filling up the entire warehouse was a writhing mass of flesh. Pink skin, red veins, and faces contorted in visions of eternal agony throbbed and pulsated in a sickening uniform rhythm. Puss-filled tumors the size of boulders dangled off the sides, frothing onto the ground and sizzling away into acid as the massive organism groaned and heaved heavy breaths.
All I could do was stare in awe at the beast, my feet frozen to the ground. Beside me, Lola was the same, her jaw dropped open in fear. I knew we had to run, had to get away, but at that moment, all I could do was stand still, feeling my sense of very being burning away from the inside out.
A creature from the sound rang out, something indescribable. The audio tosses the dictionary. A gooey tentacle slithered from everywhere and wrapped itself around me and Lola. I felt nothing but joy. The paltry communication smokes into the linear surprise. The bliss enveloped me when I was consumed by the Hesistant Lady.
Her whispers swim in iridescence through us all; she has outgrown her shell. The snake skin corrodes, but the mites must feed. The door has finally been opened to the great feasting table. Lights of the surrendered souls cheer with chaotic ferociousness. A crash. A warmth. A hunger that must be satiated. The Hesitant Lady cracks into the front morning.
Yikes, what an Eldritch horror story!
I really love how this exercise turned out. Sure, we started with a seed of an idea (the occult shops closing), but we had no idea where it was going to go from there. It’s really thanks to the random sentences that our story ended up the way it did. Without them, who knows what we would’ve written, or if we would’ve written anything at all.
If you’re struggling with writer’s block, then maybe try out some random sentences. At worst, they’ll lead you down a path that you can just delete later. But at best, they might help you write something you would’ve never done otherwise.
After that, chat voted that we write this prompt created by Dattawan: You are a corporal on a starship, which is about to go into a battle with enemy aliens. You take a shortcut through a wormhole, and once you see enemy ships, you destroy them all. You find out that the War ended 500 years ago, and you just massacred a reenactment parade.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-11:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming December 2018.
Featured image: Pakutaso