Here are a bunch of quick ideas to help you beat that creativity killer – writer’s block…

Take a walk

Much more effective than you might think. It's not simply about a time out. Fresh air invigorates your brain and the muscle movement releases chemicals into the bloodstream. Also, new visual stimulus will get your synapses crackling.

Freewriting

For ten minutes write non-stop… anything at all. Seriously, anything. Even if it's just the same word over and over and over again. Misspellings, sense, we care not for these things!

Work on some notes instead

Less pressure, fun, and a good chance it will kick start some prose writing.

Listen to some music

Engage another part of your brain to kickstart creativity.

Make a pointless rule and write to it

Such as: you can't use the letter e more than once per sentence or each sentence must have an even number of words. Limits create focus and change your perspective.

Read the papers

Great for ideas that nobody will ever believe are true.

Write a rant

Who really got up your nose this week? What would you say to them if you could? Get those juices flowing, let the emotion pour out onto the paper.

Explain your dilemma to a teddy bear

If you can't think how to proceed, explain your problem to a soft toy. The process of formulating the problem out loud is often enough to let you see the solution.

Create a strict schedule

With short periods dedicated to writing. For example, write for ten minutes, then water the plants, then write for fifteen minutes, then hang the laundry, then write for ten minutes, then do the dishes. Stick to it. That means when it says to stop as well, even if you're in a flow. Having very short time periods can help you focus and stop you thinking you’re going to write a whole novel at one sitting.

Don't obsess when you're drafting

Are you in a draft stage and worrying about word and sentence level? What on earth for? Haven't you heard of editing? Just get it down any old how and the polishing will come later.

The 20/5 technique

Get yourself an egg timer, set it for twenty minutes, put it on the table and get as much done as you can in that time. When it goes off, your fingers must leave the keyword (or paper and quill or whatever). Set it for five minutes and do something else for that time. Relieve yourself, stare out the window, play with the puppy, learn a few words of Spanish, whatever. Then repeat.

Set a small, achievable goal

Finishing the novel is not going to cut it. Finishing the paragraph, the page, or at most the first draft of the chapter, is a fine catalyst.

Use a photo

Describe all the details of the photo.

Hopefully you’ll find something there to get you going!

And if you want help writing a whole novel then you should check out our novel writing software.

Cameo characters are minor characters who only have a very small part to play in your story, usually to facilitate the plot. 

If you’re a dedicated novelist, you’ll usually write a great deal of detail and back story about all your characters, including history, ancestry, education, preferences, characteristics, what’s in their fridge and all that.

But is that really necessary to that for every single character that appears?

My view is that it’s not, and also that it’s also not necessary to make such an effort make sure all cameo characters are completely unique, balanced and whole human beings (or aliens or hamsters of whatever).

Your main characters have to be filled with conflicts and contradictions and not just fall into the tired old tropes or people will get bored. However, it’s not necessary to do the same with minor or supporting characters, and in fact there are arguments for keeping these characters simple.

The fact is that in real life, we don’t get to know all the nuances and conflicts that are contained within everyone, and we often will put them in one stereotype box or another for ease of reference, and then move on. Obviously, if we get to know them better, we will learn that there is far more to everyone. At that point they cease to become passing acquaintances (or supporting / minor characters) and start to become friends (or major characters).

If you try to make every supporting character too complex, your readers will start to get exhausted trying to keep up with all the nuances, and may lose the plot.

One last thing to say about cameo characters – it is a great opportunity to come up with totally over the top characters for light relief. If a main character is too much of a caricature, then they will probably become tiresome after a while and stop feeling real. But with a supporting character you can give them all kinds of eccentricities, because they’ll only be there long enough to amuse and then they will shuffle off on their way, their bit part complete.

If you're writing a novel and found this article useful, you might want to take a look at our novel writing software. It's completely free to try for 30 days. Click here to visit the novel writing software website and find out more. 

Stuck for inspiration? Here are some of my favourite inspirational ideas for writing a short story:

1.  Find a poem and rewrite it as a story. (If you’re having trouble finding a poem, search for ‘The Nation’s Favourite Poems’ and browse through) 
2. Choose a limerick and turn that into a full blown story. (Search for Edward Lear for the master of limericks and delightful nonsense)
3.  Ask five random people to give you a noun, an adjective, a verb, colour and a random object, and write a story that incorporates them all. (or search for an online random word generator) 
4. Write a single scene story which describes one of your most painful of embarrassing memories. (the more painful it is for you to write, the better)
5.  Read synopses of poorly rated movies and base your story on one. (You can browse Netflix – even if you’re not a member – or browse the DVDs in the library or rental store – assuming those places still exist…) 
6.  Open a book at a random page, find the first new sentence and use that as the first line of your story. (Or just use it somewhere if you’re feeling wishy washy)
7. Write a story about change from the point of view of a fruit. (Or a plant or an item that is sitting on your desk) 
8. Write a story about loss from the point of view of your youngest child (regardless of whether you have any children).
9. Write a story about a terrible crime from the point of view of the criminal, so the reader sympathises with them. The greater the level of sympathy and empathy, the better. 
10. Find an idiom, such as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ and write a fable to explain the ‘origin’ of the phrase.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory. 

Pace is a really important aspect of a good novel, and you need to have the skills to put on the brakes or put the pedal to the metal, as appropriate.

In this article we’re going to have a look at slowing the pace in your novel, but you might also want to see Head Scenes and Tail Scenes, which is highly relevant to this topic.

 

Why would you want to slow the pace in your novel?

 

You might think that slowing down the pace sounds like a bad idea – slow = boring, right? Well, it’s not quite as simple as that. Here are some reasons you might want to slow it down.

Contrast

Interest comes from contrast – if you ate Peking Duck every day, then plain toast would seem like an exotic alternative eventually. In music, songs have alternate slow and fast sections to emphasise each one – three fast sections in a row have nowhere near as much impact as a fast section sandwiched inbetween two slow ones. 

Time to take a breather

If your novel is high octane, fast-paced relentlessly, all the way through, then readers will get excitement fatigue and will either feel too exhausted to keep reading or will simply shut off and become desensitized to the action, no matter how highly it escalates. By having slower, calm wind downs inbetween the action, you give them (and your protagonist) a chance to regroup, straighten out, then hunker down for the next conflict.

Atmosphere, tension and suspense

By slowing down the tension you can add layers of atmosphere, tension and suspense. Readers will be on the edge of their seat as you keep them hanging, knowing something is going to happen… any… minute…

Okay, so how do we control pace in a novel?

Length

This is the most subtle way to slow pace without interrupting the story. Simple things such as longer sentences with sub-clauses, and longer paragraphs, all serve to make the pace more leisurely.

Character Introspection

While the character is lost in reverie, there isn’t much action happening, and it gives an opportunity for reflection and consideration of how to proceed, ensuring the reader believes the character is behaving realistically (by which we mean in character, not necessarily sensibly), as they understand the motivations.

Flashbacks

New writers often play fast and loose with flashbacks, thinking it’s a great way to get in backstory or explain the motivations of their characters. But flashbacks should be handled with care, as they completely shatter the forward momentum of the story. Used carefully, they can help with controlling pace, but beware of throwing your reader out of your story-world, when you’ve just spent however long getting them immersed.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory. 

When we have emotions, they are accompanied by a range of mental and physical feelings. As authors, we should try to explore all the feelings (even the bad ones) in order to inform our writing and ensure it really reflects reality as closely as possible.

By becoming skilled at translating our own feelings into words that our characters experience, they feel more genuine and real.

Analysing and naming feelings

The first stage is to try to identify each feeling and emotion as exactly as possible.

At a most basic level, you could say that each feeling is good, bad, or neutral. But of course, each of these types can be split into many different variations of emotion, which don’t all sit on a flat sliding scale.

For example, under good we might have: happiness, joy, delight, relaxation, contentment, excitement and anticipation.

Under bad, we might have: sadness, anger, frustration, impatience, depression, discontent, irritation and rage.

Try to label your feelings as accurately as you can as a first stage of identifying the range of emotions and their tones.

Investigating the feeling tone

Once you have started identifying the vast range of emotions in your palette, you can start to look at them more closely in order to notice the tone and physical feelings associated with them. The more you do this the better you get at it and the more detail you notice, which you can then use to inform your writing.

Here are some examples:

Anger

 

Anger is energetic and speedy. It’s hot and explosive and doesn’t pause for thought. It makes you feel tense

and hot. Your heart and breath speed up to feed the energy usage. It often comes with a tightness in the chest.

Next time you’re angry, try to step out of the anger for a moment and experience it as if you were your own character. How would you describe the feeling to a reader? Which part of your body can you feel the strongest? How does it feel?

Delight

Delight is a particular facet of happiness that has an innocent, childlike quality to it. It is usually caused by outside stimulus and leaves us feeling light and buoyant. Our faces feel relaxed and ready to smile and our lungs fill with delicious air. We can feel giddy and lost in the moment and sometimes we might feel like the barriers between us and the rest of the world are not as thick and certain as they usually are.

Next time you feel delighted, try to identify the sensations in your body and mind that make up such a feeling. Notice how your relationship to the world around you changes.

Emptiness

Emptiness is a dark, grey feeling which is hollow and heavy at the same time. We lack energy, and everything seems pointless. Our limbs feel thick and clumsy. Sometimes we may feel unsteady, ungrounded. Our minds feel fuzzy, our thoughts trying to move through thick liquid. Emptiness often feels like it will last forever.

Next time you feel emptiness, try to analyse what makes it ‘emptiness’ and also how the feeling evolves. What immediately preceded the feeling of emptiness – did it come on suddenly or gradually? What happens as the feeling leaves?

Summary

By getting to know our own emotions and feelings and how the sensations affect us both physically and mentally, we expand our toolbox and prose writing depth and range. Bring your characters to life with descriptions of their feelings that really resonate with the reader, because they have their basis in real experience.

All good novels contain a few important building blocks, so it’s a good idea to make sure your novel has all of them.

The major story elements that you really need to get a grip on from before you write the first sentence are:

•       Character
•       Situation
•       Objective
•   Opponent
•     Disaster

Now let’s look at each of these in a little more detail.

Character

Most novels start with an idea of a main character, or protagonist. You can have more than one major character, but you should try to be clear who your main protagonist is. They must be someone who can take action and who we follow the progress of in a linear fashion, even if they aren’t in every scene. They should develop in some way, emotionally, spiritually or morally.

Situation

Your story can’t take place in a void – or if it does, then I guess your situation is ‘being in a void’. The situation includes the location, time period and other aspects like technological level, culture, important historical factors, etc.

Objective

Your main characters has to have a goal. A lot of new writers miss this point, and don’t know why their writing fails to be compelling. Your protagonist will have small scene goals to keep the story trotting along, but they should also have an over-arching story-goal, something major. They don’t necessarily have to achieve this goal at the end, but they have to really want it – as if their life depended on it – which it often will.

Opponent

Hero walks up to stone, pulls out sword, becomes King. The end. Doesn’t make for much of a yarn, does it? That’s why you need opponents, to cause conflict, to give your hero something to strive against and to give your reader the reason to keep reading. Opponents can be baddies, armies, movie executives, nasty bosses, aliens, the police, forces of nature, or even parents. Anything that can get in the protagonist’s way.

Disaster

Throughout your story the stakes and tension should be increasingly rising, with each situation more terrible then the last, and you want to end with a huge bang, not with a whimper. So your story must have a disaster to end with. It may have explosions, shooting, crowds, shouting, car speeding to get to the airport before it’s too late… it really depends on the kind of story you’re writing. But it had better be BIG and EXCITING.

Summary

Does your story have all of the major story elements? If not, it might be worth having a think about those that are missing and seeing how they will enhance and improve your novel.

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to check out our novel writing software. Designed by writers for writers. 

We've put together this short video which explains The Novel Formula method for writing a novel all the way through planning, plotting, editing and submitting your novel.
You can read in much more detail about of the steps of the Novel Formula on our main website here, or an overview on this blog here.

But for now just sit back, relax and watch the video!

Getting Started Writing a Novel

Our completely unscientific poll suggests that getting started is one of the biggest obstacles for novel writers (of course, there’s a bias towards procrastinators who are reading blogs about writing and completing polls rather than getting on with it, but we’ll gloss over that for now).

Now, ‘getting started’ could mean one of two things (or possibly others we haven’t thought of). It could be about getting the idea in the first place, it could be about getting a first draft out once you know what you want to write about.

Our experience is that most writers are bubbling over with ideas that are just dying to get out, so coming up with an idea in the first place is not usually a problem. However, if it is, then there are a few methods you can use to come up with your kernel, which can be expended into a premise and eventually  a first draft.

Ways to find inspiration for your novel:

One is to ‘fill out the boxes’ in our premise, including the major story elements of: character, situation, objective, opponent and disaster. If you think this might be for you, read the full article here.

Another is to look for inspiration in the world around you. This could be anything from reading the newspapers (and not just doing the Sudoku), people watching, reading movie synopses or watching real life documentaries. You can read more about these methods here.

Ways to get the first draft out

We’re kind of big on planning and using techniques to make something really difficult (writing a novel) a bit less difficult. To this end, we think the best way to get to a first draft is to work up to it bit by bit, starting with a premise, expanding that into an outline, threading in some  detail and ending up with quite a clear structure. Once you’ve got this structure, the first draft just flies out as all you have to worry about is prose.

We've written software to walk you through every stage of a novel,  planning and further.

However, if you don’t like to plan everything through first, that’s fine too. In that case there are a few things you can do to get started, from starting a few chapters in (often the pressure of writing the first line can be paralysing), visualising the scene in your mind and then describing it or thinking about to simply refusing to allow yourself to get up until you’ve written the first five hundred words. If you're really having trouble with your first draft, perhaps you should consider going the planning route...

 

In either case, the most important advice in our opinion is to make sure you don't get hung up on
details in the first draft - just thrash it out, however awful you think it is at the time. It’s never going to be perfect first time, it’s going to be rough and ready and it’s going to need a great deal of polishing, so don’t get hung up on this adjective or that order. Just get it out!

The Novel Factory Roadmap

When I first learned about The Question, I felt like I'd just been given the keys to the City.

After the Hero's Journey, The Question is probably the most useful tool in the fiction writer's repertoire, and is especially useful for beginning writers, who need a bit more of a formula or roadmap to get them going. Obviously, once you have a firm grasp on how to write a good plot arc, you can deviate more and more from the standard structures and interpret the 'rules' in new and imaginative ways.

But having a starting point, a few rules of thumb to get you going, are invaluable. If you don't know what the Hero's Journey is, then find out, right now. If you do, then it's time to meet The Question.

This article is a short summary of The Question. For the full article, with examples, go here.

What is The Question?

The Question is a moral dilemma that you put to your protagonist somewhere towards the end of the story. By forcing them to make a difficult decision, you put your readers on a knife-edge of 'Will she? Won't she?', as they wonder if the character they've come to know and love (or hate) is made of strong enough stuff.

Can it be any question?

Not really, no. The Question should have two options. If they choose one option (often presented by the villain), then they will have everything they ever dreamed of - riches, love, power, etc. But if they choose the alternative option, they will lose everything and probably be killed or at least thoroughly maimed and shamed.

So, what's the problem? Just choose the good option, right?

Well, to make the ending more thrilling, your job as a writer is to set up the question so that the only way the protagonist can choose option one is betray their principles, probably of honesty or loyalty or something similar. Whereas, if they want to 'do the right thing' that means choosing option two.

So, will you focal character prove their mettle and rightousness even though it means losing everything they've worked for? Or will they give in to the temptation of desire and fold, allowing the baddie to triumph?

The consequences

You can have your protagonist choose either option - there's no law saying they have to do the right thing - though in the majority of modern fiction, this is what happens. However, if you want the story to be satisfying, then you have to make sure the consequences match the choice. This is fiction remember, not real life, and we like good to be rewarded and bad to be punished.

So, whatever decision your hero makes, something unexpected must happen to make sure everything is turned upside down. So if they made the right decision, they triumph, and if they made the wrong decision they get their just desserts.

Click here to read the full article about The Question, including examples, and find out why the reward does not have to be what the protagonist thought it was.