Beating The Block: 10 Strategies for Getting Through 'Writer's Block'
by Steven H. Berman You started so well. The words flowed like champagne on New Year's. And then everything went dry. The page before seemed to fill itself. Suddenly, now here you are staring at the great expanse of whiteness that is the next page...and you have nothing. You're stopped. You don't know what comes next. You're afraid nothing comes next. You've fallen into plot hole the size of Crater Lake. Written yourself into a corner. Gotten an impossible, idiotic suggestion on your writing (from someone you heretofore counted as a friend) that you suspect is maddeningly correct but basically destroys everything you've written. My fellow writer, you are not alone. You might be terrified but you are not alone. Your angst is shared by every writer at one time or another. After all, Mark Twain got stuck for two years while writing "Huckleberry Finn." That turned out alright. What follows are some proven ways to dig out, rethink, restart and continue if you've been staring at your blank page for a couple of hours without any progress or satisfaction.
- Take a shower. There's a difference between being blocked and needing a break. Get up, have a snack, a coffee. Take a shower. Take a break. Come back in a half hour. In extreme cases, come back in a year or so. If you're a writer, a good story will out and won't let you off the hook even if you've hit a large wall.
- Revise what you have written. If you're not too far along, start at the beginning, engage yourself in making the work better, realizing your intentions in each paragraph or scene with more precision. If you are far along, start fifteen pages back. You may find that when you get to your blocking point, you are in the right frame of mind to continue.
- Take a long swift, uninterrupted walk. Find a place where you don't have to think too much about personal safety and can free your mind and walk. The rhythm of the movement can do wonders for the mind searching to solve plot problems. Someone said there is no story problem that can't be solved by a five-mile walk. This is also true of most moderate, repetitive exercise. More challenging exertion might be better for your heart, but it will cause you to focus more on surviving the exercise than solving your writing problem.
- Read a fiction book or watch a movie that takes place in a similar time period or has a similar tone to the piece you are writing. Research additional facts about the time period or arena or people that concerns your story or script. Sometimes this will give you a notion of what to write on your material.
- Sleep on it. Read the last few pages of what you have written right before you go to sleep. Then, immediately upon waking in the morning, before doing anything, start writing. Write what comes. You may find that during the night, your sleeping brain has led you to a solution. No kidding.
Steven H. Berman is a veteran writer-producer and entertainment executive. He has been involved in the development of over a thousand scripts from his years as an executive at CBS Entertainment and Columbia Televsion where he was Executive Vice-president in charge of all development and production. His writing and Executive Producing credits include more than a dozen MOW and Mini-series projects as well as numerous pilots and series. He received a WGA Award Nomination for his mini-series "MARK TWAIN'S ROUGHING IT" for best adapted long form in 2003 and his MOW "TWICE UPON A CHRISTMAS" was selected by Laura Bush as the kick off film for her series of family film screenings at the White House. He was an Executive Producer on the feature film "BEWITCHED" starring Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman. |
