We’ve all been there – staring at a blank page, or at that blinking cursor at the end or partway through a sentence – with seemingly no clue how to take the next step. The easiest and the hardest thing is you just have to push through.

Brainstorm, Decide, Execute

There are a lot of different opinions about writer’s block, and all the various forms that that comes in – so much so it might be an article all its own one day – but what it boils down to is decisions, and self-discipline. Sometimes you just have to sit there and brainstorm, and then filter through the ideas until you can decide. But then you have to execute.

Work Backwards

When I find myself in this predicament, I think to the next event that needs to happen, or the event that needs to happen in that particular scene, and track backwards to how that situation can get set up. If I can’t do that much but I know what characters need to be in the space, I’ll just force an interaction until something starts happening. You’re going to fumble your way through some garbage, but at least you’ll have something on paper that you can begin to mould. At the very least, you’ll have an example of what not to do, and even that is better than nothing.

Refresh Your State of Mind

If the idea well comes up dry, that’s a good time to watch your favourite movie, or reread your favourite book, or go for a walk, or have a lunch date with friends. Whatever gets you in a zen frame of mind. For me, it’s anything and everything Lord of the Rings. I can’t even begin to describe the sort of magical fireworks that start firing when I get lost in Middle-Earth. Figure out what that is for you, and take an adventure there. Relaxing your mind into somewhere else can open a lot of pathways that were seized shut by the pressure we tend to put ourselves under.

At the end of the day, however, it really is just a matter of putting one word after the other. If it’s really so hard that you’re running up against a brick wall, figure out what it is about your story that excites you, and write the scenes about that. You don’t need to get trapped in chronological order during the drafting phase. Just get it on paper, whatever way is going to work for you. Ideas are nothing until they are realized in the physical world, and the only way to do that is to put it on paper.