How to use this Page

•       If an idea excites you, go with it.
•       Be open to revision, and then be courageous and submit!
•       Reach out, make friends, and support other writers. 

By Prompt 32 in The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing you are beginning to better understand your story. You also understand how many holes you've created and you often feel like you're floating without a net. By now, you also appreciate the discipline it takes to write a story with a plot from beginning to end.

Now you know or at least are beginning to suspect that the reason you procrastinate about writing has nothing to do with being blocked or not knowing what to write next. The daily prompts in PWBook of Prompts do that for you.

The reason you procrastinate is because you're afraid. You're afraid what you write isn't good enough or clever enough or witty enough. You worry you'll never capture the brilliance you see in your head and translate it to the page and, even if you do, you know it won't be perfect so why bother. Or this, you delight in your own writing and still, you resist, it all seems like such hard work.

Replace your belief in scarcity with the belief that so long as you sit down, read the next prompt, open yourself to inspiration and write your intended daily word count, you have enough, you are enough. You always have been. You always will be... enough.

SPECIAL EVENTS:
Book Giveaway: Next week, a couple of awesome websites are hosting a book give-away and party in celebration of The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing release last month. Stay tuned for more information.

Plot Webinar: Join me virtually on March 6th to Track Your Plot at the Scene Level, webinar hosted by the Writers Store.

Knowing what to write where in a story with a plot allows for a more loving relationship with your writing. Whether writing a first draft or revising, if you falter wondering what comes next in a story with a plot, follow the prompts in The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing.

Today, I write.

To familiarize yourself with the basic plot terms used here and in the PW Book of Prompts:
1) Watch the plot playlists on the Plot Whisperer Youtube channel.
2) Read The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master
3) Fill out the exercises in The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories
4) Visit:
Blockbuster Plots for Writers
Plot Whisperer on Facebook
Plot Whisperer on Twitter

Nook Kindle PDF iTunes on the iPad, look for it in the iBook Store

The process of revising your novel or story is a series of decisions and understanding the decision process can strengthen your revision process.

Avoid Narrow Framing of the Story

You get a letter from an editor that says something like this: “When Michelle is shot with an arrow, I wonder if she really needs to die. What if she avoids the arrow entirely?”

This frames the revision in terms of whether or not Michelle will be shot with an arrow and then die. That’s too narrow a context for a revision decision, and leaves out many alternate options. What if, she is shot in the leg and can’t walk; or, she is shot in the eye and can’t see; or, she is shot and runs a fever and recovers; or, she avoids the arrow, but Jillian is shot instead; or, (fill in the blank)__________.

Or, you may get a revision note that says the final chapter/climax scene doesn’t have enough excitement and needs more action. Maybe. But what if you revise it, concentrating on the mood the scene evokes, working to make it tense and emotion-filled? Maybe the problem is Mood, not amount of Action present.

When you are presented with only two options, don’t accept that narrow framing of the revision question. You don’t have to answer a “whether or not” question. Work to find other alternates. Editors don’t care HOW you make the story work, only that you do something that works.

You wonder whether or not your character should be red-headed. Narrowly framed questions like this look at the revision in isolated chunks and that’s not helpful. Instead, ask, “How will the character’s hair color influence the story? What if she were blond? Brunette? Red? Black? White?” You don’t just want to know the effect in a small section of the story, but across the whole novel. That’s giving yourself some real options that can lead to decisions that create a stronger revision.

Remove the current option. One trick to make sure you are asking more open-ended questions is to remove the current option; that forces you to take a wider look at your story and its context.

Ask: What if there was no archer, no arrow? What if Michelle never walked into that dark woods where the archer was hiding? What scene could replace this one?

Recognize: The final chapter/scene isn’t working–yet.
Ask: What options do I have to improve the storytelling here?
Multiple answers: Add action, revise for mood, create a totally new scene, keep the action the same but change the setting, keep the setting but change the action, create a different emotional context, and so on.

Multi-track to Give Yourself Options

You’ve heard it suggested before: write ten openings to your story. Why do psychologists who study decision-making agree that this is good advice? Because multiple options create a real choice. (I am not talking about multi-tasking here, where you try to do 10 things at the same time; rather, you have multiple tracks ongoing, which gives you choices.)

For example, if you want to buy a house, you don’t just look at one house and make an offer. You would look at many houses, over an extended period of time. Or, to bring it back to publishing, when a book designer presents possible book covers, they don’t just do one cover with minor variations (do you want red or black type; should the typeface be 12pt or 16pt). Instead, they work to bring several totally different concepts to the table.

What do you think of this cover for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?



How does it compare to the other previous covers? Each has a distinct visual style. You want the same range of options when you revise.






Researchers say it is much better to work simultaneously on several options, rather than to do them in sequence. In other words, write ten opening sentences and then choose where to go next. This is a stronger way of working than to write an opening sentence and follow it with an opening scene; then write a second opening sentence and alternate opening scene; repeat with a third. Working simultaneously on several options yields more creativity and does it faster.

When you create these options for yourself, beware of sham options, or of writing options that obviously will not work. Options that are too bold, the wrong tone, too clichéd, or otherwise obviously off the mark for this novel—these are not real options.

Which of these five would you say are sham options for an opening sentence for a Cinderella story? Which are real options?

• Once, long ago and far away, in a forgotten land, in a forlorn castle, there lived a girl whose mother had died.
• This is the story of Cinderella.
• The kitchen maid sank onto a small stool beside the fire and thrust her feet and hands toward the meager flame, ignoring the cinders that smeared the sole of her boots, permeated the thin fabric of her skirt. She was cold. Bone-cold and weary.
• Cinderella, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow.
• The new step-mother arrived on a blustery winter day, bringing color and hope to the grieving castle.

When you are stuck on a revision decision, work to give yourself multiple real options. Don’t get stuck asking, should whether or not Michelle will get shot and die or not? Widen the context and find other options.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

What if you really are stumped and the dreaded Writer’s Block is looming on the horizon?

First, look at your manuscript for Bright Spots. I know—in our zeal to revise and improve our mss, we focus so much on places where things are going wrong, that we forget to acknowledge the places where things are going right. This revision strategy asks you to look for Bright Spots, Golden Words (highlight these with yellow marker), Emotional Scenes that make the reader laugh or weep, Exciting Action, or any other place where the writing worked. Try to determine, what made it work?

What did you do well? Can you clone that success?

Approach a scene in the same way as before. What was your process for writing that scene? Repeat it for the scene where you are stuck. How did you create those emotions? Did you concentrate on reliving an emotional episode from your life? Did you mechanically go through and question every verb?

Look at your process, your inspiration, your word choices, the rhythm of the sentences—anything that worked before—and clone it.

If your own Bright Spots don’t help enough, then look for a Mentor Text, someone else’s writing that does what you want to do and try to clone that Bright Spot. Don’t worry about wholesale copying from someone else; you will add your own spin to it. You’re only looking to borrow a storytelling strategy.

Look first at stories similar to yours: if you write YA mystery, look to other YA mysteries. If you can’t find a Mentor Text there, though, don’t hesitate to look farther afield. Maybe a historical non-fiction uses some diary entries to create a sense of historical validity. Could you use fictional diary entries to do the same thing in your story?

Fill in this:
This revision problem is similar to ____________(title of mentor text). This book, solved a storytelling problem similar to mine by________________________.

In other word, you just used an analogy, comparing your storytelling problem to another book/story. If the Mentor Text used a first-person point-of-view, maybe that will work for your story, too. If the Mentor Text used a particularly effective description of the setting—even if the settings are vastly different—maybe that strategy will work in your story.

A variation of this would be to look at Best Practices of writing a novel. For example, Best Practices says that you should never add a flashback to the opening chapter. Oops! You did that. We read many books on how to write a novel, looking for these “best practices,” advice on how to write and revise better. And you would be foolish to ignore creative writing Best Practices. These are a sort of Playlist of Bright Spots.

However, you may also want to try doing the exact opposite of Best Practices. Nothing says it can’t work, it will just take more creativity to make it work.

When you revise a novel or story, you are making a series of decisions, important ones. Look at your decision-making processes to see if you can make smarter decisions and make them faster.

Nook Kindle PDF iTunes on the iPad, look for it in the iBook Store

Your novel is progressing nicely and you finish a chapter. But then, the next chapter is calling and you procrastinate, you read blogs, you do laundry, you AVOID.

How can you get started on that next chapter?

Sensory details. I like to imagine where my character is in the next chapter, then close my eyes, put myself there and try to imagine all the things the character might see, hear, touch, taste or smell. Then, I push hard to find an interesting detail and I start writing there. The danger is that you might start with too much description. That’s OK, you can take care of that during revision. The goal here is to get started.

Action. Alternately, starting with a great verb can help jumpstart the story. Think beyond the usual: walk, run, turn head, whirl. Instead, go for something distinctive: salute, pirouette, regurgitate. (Please, avoid those pesky adverbs, which add so little. Not walked lazily. But strolled.) Get your character in motion and keep him/her in motion for a page or so, and you’ll figure out where to go next.

Dialogue. One of my favorite openings to a novel is Tom Sawyer, which opens with his aunt calling: “Tom!”
When in doubt, begin a new chapter with a bit of dialogue. Keep it going for about ten exchanges and then move on.

Dead End Ways to Start a Chapter

On the other hand, there are some dead-end ways to start chapters:

Waking up. Rarely does it work to have a character start a chapter in bed, then wake up. Boring. (OK. Prove me wrong! As long as it gets you going on a new chapter.)

Backstory. Long explanations of a character’s history rarely excite the reader either. We don’t need to know about Mary’s uncle’s horse and how it escaped and caused Mary to jump into a ditch where she broke her leg. Instead, show-don’t-tell how she is dealing with that broken leg. Past action is boring; current action is exciting.

Dull vocabulary. If there’s ever a place for brilliance of voice, phrasing, interesting vocabulary, it’s the opening of a chapter. Here is where you want to catch a reader’s attention. No, you don’t want it to be so overblown that it is out of character with the rest of the story; however, you do want it to catch a reader. And, the beauty is that if you do overwrite, it’s just a first draft.

These are ideas to help you get something—anything—on paper. There’s plenty of time for revision. But that first draft has to get written, one chapter at a time. Stop procrastinating. Write!

By Julie Daines


So, I've written three complete novels. One to be published late next year.

I just finished my third a week or two ago.

And now, as I stare at a blank Scrivener document, I can't remember how to write something new.

Oh sure, I have lots of stories percolating in my brain. I don't have writer's block per se.

I just can't remember how to get the ball rolling.

So I need your advice.

What are your tips and trade secrets to spewing out that first draft? Do you outline? Do you wing it? Do you write without chapter divisions? Do you write in scenes? Where do you go to generate plot ideas? What is your one, fail-proof step that helps you get the story flowing?

Please feel free to elaborate!

Even in the heat of summer, when the pavement sizzles and the sidewalk buckles, a writer can feel like she’s trying to break through the ice to find the words to tell her story. At times it can feel as if our words are trapped beneath the surface, frozen like fish caught in the ice while swimming upstream, irretrievable until the next thaw. How can a writer break the ice? Some days I

By Steve Maurer.

I am a freelance writer in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I’ve written for clients from Germany to California, all across the United States and in some small towns.

I’m also a freelance writer who doesn’t believe in writer’s block.

More specifically, I don’t believe in that mythical, wraithlike ogre that sucks the life and soul from a writer, rendering him impotent, unable to put words down on paper or screen. Yes, I still have challenges; I just don’t believe that true writer’s block exists.

The reason is simple: I can talk.

After all, writing is nothing more – and nothing less – than the written record of a conversation, whether it’s a speech or a dialog, spoken or unspoken. If you can talk, you can write.

I believe that what some folks call writer’s block is simply the result of a lack of confidence or a lack of motivation. Here are seven proven tips I use to get into the “write” mood.

1. If You’re a Writer, Call Yourself a Writer

Go back right now and reread the first paragraph of this post. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

Ah, you’re back. Did you see the answer to the confidence problem? It’s in the first five words of the very first sentence: I am a freelance writer. A ton of material has been written about speaking things into existence. It’s powerful. The concept of visualization is often used in sports to improve athletic skills.

Writers are no different. If you’re going to be a writer, then call yourself a writer. Go ahead, say it out loud: I am a freelance writer!

New writers start out excited about making a living with their words. However, doubt sets in and confidence wanes, smashing their dreams to pieces.

I know. This is one hurdle I had to clear myself.

Start calling yourself a writer at every opportunity. Get some business cards that say so. When people ask you what you do, tell them you’re a writer. Hey, they won’t laugh; they’ll believe you. In fact, they’ll probably ask what you write. If you still have job, mention it last, if at all. The more you call yourself a writer, the easier it gets.

And you’ll begin believing it as well!

2. Start by Writing Something Fun

Sometimes you’ll get up and tell yourself that you don’t feel like writing. What you probably mean is that you aren’t ready to get started on your paid writing gigs. No problem; start by writing something fun!

I’d recommend that every new writer start a blog on something they enjoy. I have blogs on gardening and computers, two of my passions. I get up every Monday morning, go out to the garden, take some veggie photos and then usually write a blog post. This gets my creative juices flowing, and viola:

I’m in the mood for words,
simply because they’re near me!
Funny, but when they’re near me,
I’m in the mood for words.

(Sorry about that; I’m an old song buff too.)

Sometimes, I’ll get really sneaky. I pull up several documents that need written, and then I’ll open up my browser in front of them. I write the blog post and when I close the browser the articles are there, waiting for me.

For new writers, there’s an added benefit in having a blog. I post on my one or the other of my blogs once a week. That comes out to 52 articles a year. If you don’t have clips yet, use these posts. In fact, the back of my business card says this:

Take a break and visit these sites for some of Steve’s writing samples.

The computer site and gardening site addresses are listed so the reader can go there and check out