Lesson 37

Lesson 37
Writers Block:
 Welcome back. These weeks have been fun for me. Let me know your thoughts. It’s good writing practice. Let’s get started. I sat down to make our morning coffee and thought, “What am I doing?” I’ve been putting off writing while writing these classes to share. You could say that I have writer’s block, and I am avoiding my books. I am still working on three. One is the fifth book for the Wild Boys series. The other two are my screenplays that people wanted me to write into books, so I am rewriting them. I don’t know which is harder, taking a book and cutting out description to make a screenplay, or taking a screenplay and adding a whole bunch of detail, drama, and scene.

Anyway, I thought about lesson thirty-two where I talked about being in a slump, and I came up with other ways that may help. So here we go. Now, if I could only follow my own advice.
If you get stuck, go back to the beginning of your book and carefully read through it, and pick it apart line by line. Where can you improve? How can you reword it to make it sound better, or more interesting? Where can you add more description, more mannerisms, or more dialogue?
What is your character wearing? Is it pristine, or wrinkled, or drenched with sweat? How about their hair, their surroundings, the time of day, the lighting, or the chill in the air. Like I told my vanity publisher, “I could add and rewrite my book over 1000 times in the next five years.” We all could, but then we would never see it on the market for others to enjoy.
If you’re still stuck, go to your local bookstore or library and do some research. Grab a book that piques your interest. It doesn’t even have to be your genre. You don’t have to read the book. Check the pages out on form, diction, and description. How did they describe their character, their surroundings, or their mannerisms? Remember, they made it into a bookstore or library, so they must have done something right.
Read how they opened the first chapter scene of their book. Go from chapter to chapter and page through. Pick a page from one or two chapters and read a few lines from the end of one and the beginning of the next. Does it continue to flow? Can you pick up on the character from the last chapter, and are you interested enough to turn the page. I wrote a newspaper article for my book, ‘Daniel Peters, ace reporter, B-29 Found.’ It was just the front page of a newspaper that I thought up to use for the cover. This became too complicated for the publisher and would have cost extra, so I decided against it. What I’m getting at is that I let people read it and they all asked, “Where is the rest of the newspaper? I wanted to turn the page and to continue reading.” This is what you want in your books.
You want them to keep turning the pages, to see what happens next. Remember, conflict and strife, adventure and surprise. How is he going to get out of that? What will he do next?
When I write, my hand jitters, my heart pounds, I get short of breath, and my eyes water. I feel the moment. I feel the character. I am right by their sides. Describe it if you can feel it. Put it down in your story through the character or the moment.
What if you don’t know where your character should go next? That’s a problem. My books came as a package deal. I see the beginning, the middle, and the end for the most part. My problem is the filler, all the in between that connects them altogether. Sometimes by adding that content, the story may go off in a whole new direction with a different ending. Now it begins to get fun.
If you really don’t know, put yourself into your character’s shoes and become your character. What would you do? After all, it is you who is writing your story. Maybe you have more than one idea that you want to write about. This is a good thing. Start another book. Go in a whole new direction for a while. Build an outline for new characters, new scenery, and new heart pounding content. Now you can bounce back and forth, taking a break from one or the other. I am usually working on three at one time, and sometimes one will just take over and zip. My pen will fly all the way to the end.
Whatever you do, whatever you decide, don’t give up. You have a story in you that you want to share. You know it to be good, so write it great. Bring it to life so others will be inspired, in awe, or fulfilled by your book.
If you were an artist, I would suggest spilling your coffee and drawing around it. But you are a writer, so read words. Spill them out and use them. Write around them and most of all have fun with them. You could also make up words, as long as you explain them in your book as you go along. 1,500 new words are added to dictionaries every year. Maybe your character can start a new trend. They even wrote a book on how to talk Klingon.
Give yourself some time and relax. Think and let it roll around in your mind. Check back to my other lesson, number thirty-two for more ideas. I could probably think of more, but you need to write, so I will stop. Get back to your book, and I’ll see you next week. Until then,
 
Happy Writing from rickkurtisbooks.com