Some tips for novelists:

What if you’re a nov­el­ist and get stuck? Maybe you sim­ply don’t know what hap­pens next. Maybe you need plot points but all the ones you’ve con­sid­ered seem trite. Maybe you see a too-quiet end­ing com­ing and you des­per­ately hope that a more excit­ing end­ing arrives with­out you hav­ing to “force” it. In each of these cir­cum­stances you are eager to write, will­ing to write, and happy to show up, but you don’t know what to write. What can you do? One or another of the fol­low­ing strate­gies might work for you:

Take a vaca­tion with your work. The next plot point may not be avail­able as you sit at your com­puter but it might become avail­able if you took a drive in the coun­try or a walk by the beach. At least there’s a chance that a change of venue might spark some asso­ci­a­tion or open a chan­nel to the answer. Take that chance.

Reread what you’ve writ­ten. Some­times the prob­lem is that we’ve for­got­ten where we are and the next bit of writ­ing would be avail­able if only we remem­bered our place in the novel. Reread­ing gets you caught up and helps you remem­ber your place in the story.

Write anyway—but strate­gi­cally. Say to your­self, “Yes, what I need isn’t avail­able and just writ­ing isn’t the answer, but maybe, just maybe, it is the answer, so I’ll write for an hour—and if it still isn’t there I’ll stop, so as not to frus­trate myself, and try some­thing else.” Writ­ing may not be the answer—but it might be.

“Sleep think” in a dreamy way. When we sleep we have more neu­rons avail­able for think­ing than we do when we’re awake, which is why so many writ­ers solve their writ­ing prob­lems in their sleep. Before going to be or before tak­ing a nap, give your­self the fol­low­ing sleep think­ing prompt, “I won­der what should hap­pen next?” or some­thing sim­i­lar. Try to go to bed with a won­der about what might want to emerge next rather than a worry about the novel not work­ing. When you wake up, and whether or not you think that any­thing new is avail­able, turn to your novel and do a lit­tle writing—what you need may be right there, wait­ing for you.

Try one of these four strate­gies. One may work!

 

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