If you’re experiencing writers block, it’s because you have a flaw in your writing process. The flaw can be something very easily fixed or it can be something that’s a complete systemic failure. So lets look at it.
There’s two ways that you can write a story. A) Pantsers are writers who are inspired by seeing a dog get hit by a car and suddenly they’re writing White Fang with no plan, they’re just writing by the seat of their pants. Hence the name pantsers. B) Planners are writers who plan out their story so that they have an abstract which brings them from A to B to C to D to E. They know what’s going to happen on day zero when they put the first words of the story together.
The method of planning I described is called the “tent pole” which goes something like this. A) Bob woke up in a strange place and he was naked. B) Bob meets Sally who’s also naked C) Sex Robots chase Bob and Sally D) Sally gets captured by robots E) Bob uses that time to escape and meet Steve.
A nice thing about tent pole is that Word counts are helpful guides to give you ideas of how much story goes between tent poles, the down side is the structure. Some people do well with that, others don’t and this is where the key comes in. There’s certain facts that we know about writing, and while we might want to debate facts or lie to ourselves claiming that we’re writing a totally unique story, we’re not. You will always use common tropes like the damsel in distress or whatever. Christopher Booker masterfully identifies that there’s really only 9 basic plots that are possible. (his book is called the seven basic plots) There are only 7 possible plots that a story can have. (technically it’s 9, but 2 are specialty plots)
Once you understand the concepts as he presents them, you realize that the entire Harry Potter franchise is a rip off of Star Wars which is a rip off of…
I’m not trying to trash talk J.K Rowling, I’m just making a point that the fundamentals are known and with the exception of “mysteries” like Clue and one other specialty story, you will be “the man” if you can find a story that isn’t one of the 7 basic plots. So knowing that, you are not going to reinvent the wheel, it’s actually quite easy to focus on telling your story because the engineering is already done for you.
Think about it. Lets say that you’re doing a rags to riches story. You know that the Protagonist has to be in the gutter, then there’s hope which the antagonist is going to crush as their introduction to the story. The protagonist gets depressed, they cry, they unload a bunch of back story to the team mom who gives them a boo boo sticker and a pat on the butt along with a shot of MAN THE F%@# UP and the little girl suddenly becomes Plucky or they become the Determinator… Now they have to topple the protagonist and sit on top but before they can get there, the antagonist has to unleash Hell on Earth or the protagonist has a choice to switch sides maybe.
The point being, you don’t really have a choice to skip these aspects of the story or tell them at different times. You can’t have the big final fight scene at the beginning and then tell how we got there. You can’t introduce the protagonist at the 11th hour and that’s how people hit writers block. They write themselves into a corner because they’re trying to be “unconventional” and the only way out is to use Phlebotinum, a blatant hand wave aka Handwavium, or some type of cosmic entity shows up breaking the universe.
My personal writing style is usually a 5 act structure built using the tentpole method. I place my poles and then I order them following a 5 act structure’s tension with each pole being where I want a chapter to stop. Then I pick out which scenes I feel like writing, and I go to town by the seat of my pants. I write each section 3 different times, and I compile a final draft from the three pieces I wrote as I create my rough format. Then I proofread as a perform a second pass on the formatting.
By the time I’m putting the work together into a formatted product, I’m done writing. My goal wasn’t ever to write from chapter 1 to chapter 30, it was to write from A to B using a 3 part act structure or a cliffhanger so in reality it’s 30 short stories telling a much larger story.
I hope that helps
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