Writers' block? Cat got your tongue? Here's a few tips to help you get back on your way to your greatest work yet. Some people have great plot ideas but struggle to get the words out on paper. Others are great with words and syntax but struggle to come up with the content. Whatever your flaw, wherever your weakness, there's always a solution to the problem. 1. Read This may sound like an obvious tip, but reading the works of others is a great way to learn how to construct, develop your own style based on influences, adopt terms and phrases and develop your own lexicon. It can broaden your knowledge of a particular subject, offer an insight into an area you plan on researching for your own piece and, above anything else, gives you an idea of what gets published. 2. Keep a journal Again, this is a pretty stereotypical tip. But how annoying is it when the perfect line comes into your mind and you have no way of recording it. The exact wording of your perfect sentence will never be reconstructed, and so having a means to record all of your random thoughts can be extremely useful. More to the point, a journal can be a point of reference for anything that may inspire you: a place you visited, a conversation overheard, the profile of a character or an action/event you lived through. Documenting details of your personal life can come in useful when writing fact or fiction as I always find it best to write about what you know or can relate to somehow. 3. Write something, anything, every day It could be a well-worded text to a friend, a love letter to your partner or a fragment of a chapter for your next work, but keeping your pen in the ink is what keeps you in the game. Practising your writing only develops your abilities as a writer so what harm can it do? 4. Get inspired Travelling, experiencing and living are always a great form of research. By experiencing the things you write about, you gain a personal sense of actually having done something as opposed to just reading about it in books or on the internet. Go to the place you are setting your book. Do the things your character does. See what your characters see. Build an authenticity that can not be disputed. 5. Anthropology This is basically a big word that justifies people watching. In order to build your own character profiles, you must have an understanding of people and where in the world your character would be placed. What outfit choices would your character make? What kind of decisions are they likely to make? Who would they befriend? All of the answers to your character questions lie within the existing population. You just have to look a little closer. 6. Characterisation The best tip I can give for creating characters is to put a piece of yourself into every individual. It could be a small personality trait or physical attribute, an insecurity, a strength or a weakness, a hobby or a pet hate. If you can relate to all of the characters and make them believable as human beings, then an audience is more likely to relate to them too. Don't be afraid to reveal flaws in your character and make them REAL. Whilst on the subject of characterisation, I should also note that all characters that appear more than once in your piece should have a part to play or an importance to the story, otherwise you're probably just rambling. Don't overcomplicate your set of characters. If a person is featured in a story then they must have a purpose. 7. Plausibility Writing about something you relate to only makes the story more believable and an audience more likely to empathise. Unless, of course, you're writing fantasy. In which case, let your imagination run wild. But even in this case, there must be an element of mutual understanding. Relate the fantasy world to the existing one, whether that is defining similarities between the two worlds or highlighting contrasts. There must always be a point of reference which an audience can identify with in order for them to relate to your words. 8. Research Sometimes, experiencing the thing you want to write about isn't possible. For example, if you're writing a piece set in World War 1, it is not possible to go back in time to live through those experiences. In these cases, extensive research can be undertaken to gain a good grasp of the era you're writing about. Books and the internet are great for facts and reading contemporary personal experiences. Documentaries and films offer visual representations which can help with the creating process and interviews with experts or people of interest are particularly helpful to gain further knowledge of life at the time. 9. Enter competitions Take all the opportunities to write and put your work out into the world by the metaphorical horns. 10. Write the novel you want to read Once you've read a multitude of books, you start to develop a sense of what is missing in the world of literature, what you want to read and, most importantly, what you want to write. "There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own."
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