theinkstainsblog:

firemoon42:

• Do an
  outline, whatever way works best.
  Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

• Conflicts
  and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps
  the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is
  hard to write.

• Change
  the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at
  it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor
  character, whatever.

• Know the
  characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you.
  Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

• Fill in
  holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes,
  and add content and context.

• Have
  flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These
  stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency
  and uncertainty to the narrative.

• Introduce
  a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more
  compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

• Take
  something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force
  him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

• Twists
  and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist
  is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up
  and get it rolling again.

• Secrets. If
  someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good
  way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the
  secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

• Kill
  someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects
  all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

• Ill-advised
  character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does
  something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then
  engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

• Create cliff-hangers.
  Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and
  make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really
  bring out your creativity.

• Raise the
  stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder.
  Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an
  important choice.

• Make the
  hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the
  characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not
  necessarily to be successful, but active
  and complicit in the narrative.

• Different
  threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be
  killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and
  a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me,
  how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

• Figure
  out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get
  the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you
  actually end up writing.

• What if?
  What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When
  you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the
  story will present itself.

• Start
  fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s
  terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or
  you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety
  crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between
  will come with time.

*Blinks* I-I’m not the only one to call writer’s block needing to un-stick the story? 

maggie-stiefvater:

For those who can’t make it to the Seven Sentences seminar but wish they could, here’s some of my writing advice that I’ve put online (and everything else I’ve written on writing is tagged as how-i-write on Tumblr):

Writing Characters That Are Not You

Why I Don’t Use Character Profiles

How Metaphors and Figurative Language Help Convey Emotion

Fleshing Out Characters By, Like, Using Real Flesh

How Salient Noise Helps a Novel Feel Real

Creating Creepy Atmosphere

The Disposability of Ideas

Time Management

Finding a Critique Partner