There are things that can help you if you get stuck, either with your existing story or if you’re writing a new story. One of the best ways that you can get unstuck is to just start writing. Let your imagination go write about anything. Don’t worry about thinking and planning and fixing it all. You can do all that later, but the idea is just start writing. Something. Anything. Then your imagination will start to take over. You’ll get more creativity. Things will start to come about in your story.
One of the things that you can start writing about is a character, either your protagonist or your antagonist. Think about something about one of the characters and just start writing anything you can think of.
What is he, or she, or it, look like? What do they like?
For example, does she love to get up in the morning to go save the world? Or is he the kind that wakes up in the morning and wants to just go start trouble somewhere?
What does the character dislike? Maybe she feels that everything has to be in order and then finds something that is out of order. Your character just doesn’t like that. Or maybe he just hates being around crowds. Maybe your character is afraid of crowds, and then because of the story, he has to go solve something that involves getting in the middle of a crowd. There’s some tension for your story in something that simple.
To get unblocked, just start writing anything you think about of your character. The more you write, the more ideas will start to come to you. There’s a lot that you can do with your characters
But you don’t have to start with the character. Imagine a scene in your mind, just like you are watching a movie, Create a vision in your mind of a scene. Write about what you see in that scene. Is it in the middle of the city? Is it in an Old West town?
Then ask yourself, “What time of day is it?” Is it in the morning or the afternoon? Start talking about what tells the time of day.
The the afternoon sun is getting in your character’s eyes. They they just love waking up so early in the morning and watching the sunrise.
Talk about what the temperature in your scene. Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it cloudy?
Write about anything you can think about. Just start filling in that scene. You can also just write something that comes to mind about your story or a story. It’s just an idea. Maybe there’s a conflict you think you know. Perhaps your character that hates crowds discovers there’s someone in a crowd and they have a bomb.
All of the sudden, you can start writing about that. Do they think about it or just act out of impulse? How does your character get through the crowd?
Or you can have a more gentle story. You could have an idea that your character wakes up in the morning. The biggest challenges she has is that she can’t get breakfast because she has run out of eggs. So she goes to the store, and the store is out of eggs, and she decides the one thing in the world that she has to have for breakfast this morning is eggs. That’s all she cares about. She doesn’t care about pancakes, she doesn’t want toast, she doesn’t want leftover cold pizza, or anything else. All she cares about is having eggs for breakfast.
That could be a pretty funny story. Just imagine all the difficulties she will face. Your idea doesn’t have to be well thought out. You don’t have to think through these things. Just come up with ideas and start writing them down. Don’t worry if they don’t fit, they don’t have. You don’t have to have a beginning, middle, and end yet. You will at some point, but not right away. Know that when you get an idea, start the story wherever you’re at and just start writing. Your imagination will begin to use all your creativity as you write.
You can fix all everything later. Even if you write multiple scenes, you may be able to put them all together into a reasonable story sometime. But you don’t have to do that to start. The first thing you want to do is just get started. Start writing anything you can think of. Once you get that set, then your imagination, your creativity, they’ll start moving the story. Your imagination may move the story in directions that you didn’t think about before you started. Things may start to change even after you’ve thought you knew where they were heading. Your story may actually improve just because your imagination comes up with new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things.
I’d like to encourage you today when you’re writing, let’s your imagination go free. Don’t ever be stuck thinking I’ve got to do it right or that it has to be perfect. There are all these things that are analytical that can hold you back, but don’t let that side of your brain gain control. Just let your imagination. The more you write, the better you’ll write. The more interesting ideas that you’ll have. Some of the ideas you may not even use, but they may spark ideas for other things that you could use.
Let me encourage you once again that if you get stuck, just start writing. Your imagination will give you a story that will make it a great day of creating something fun.