THE STORY SPOT

Writer’s Block is a serious matter. It can cause stress, anxiety, and a sense that a project will never come to fruition. The worse part is that those very emotions feed the block itself. It’s a painful, frustrating cycle and one that’s all too familiar to writers of all forms and genres.

You are not alone.

Ask most any writer and they’ll likely recall a time when their words ceased to flow. How to cope? You may tell yourself to work harder or faster or you may set yourself on a strict, rigid routine. Perhaps you’ll read several books on craft before digging into endless writing exercises. Any or all of these may do the trick (a fantastic thing!) but sometimes taking a break and getting some perspective what the doctor ordered.

THE STORY SPOT to the rescue.

Our Writer’s Block Buster package will take your project out of your hands for one week and return it to you along with a selection of suggestions — specific to your project — for you to tackle one at a time.

At the outset, you’ll share with your story consultant the issues that that you are having with the work. Then you’ll turn it over to your consultant partner. During that week, you’ll do your very best not to think about your project, write about it, or stress about it. You’ll make a commitment not to open your project notebook or file. It will be out of your hands. Your story consultant will review the piece with your input in mind and compile a list of five to ten Writer’s Block Busters designed to lift you from your place of immobility. Writer’s Block Busters may be:

• alternative story suggestions
• writing prompts or exercises
• reading assignments
• experiential assignments…

…a combination of the above or none of the above in lieu of something completely different. Your Writer’s Block Busters will be created especially for you and your project alone. Each assignment is totally personal, designed to help you succeed.

Questions? Get in touch at [ info @ the-story-spot.com ] or via our
Contact Us page.

Ready to get crackin’?

Contact Us page.

Photo credit: Adam Lyon on Flickr.

• How To Overcome Writer’s Block at Pro Writing Tips

Lisa Klink over at What It’s Like posts about the perils of over-explaining your villain’s motivations.

Generally, attempts to explain why a bad guy went bad turn out to be oversimplified and unsatisfying.

My general advice here is that if you’re creating an extreme villain (like Hannibal, the Joker or Anton Chigurh), don’t feel obliged to explain their psychosis – it may backfire on you. Let them be like the shark – a force of nature no one can truly understand.

She’s right on the money when she says this is an appropriate stance for an über-villain but might not be the way to go for a more “moderate bad guy”.

Read Lisa’s full post here: “More on Villains”

And keep in mind, kids, that villains are often antagonists but antagonists are not always villains. Why? Because the antagonist is the person who is actively working to keep the protagonist from getting what she wants. That may be the sweet old lady down the street who’s keeping little Jimmy from roving the night fueling his twice-rehabed crack habit. She may be firmly standing in his way by locking him in his room yet she’s not a knife-wielding psychopath bent on taking over the civilized world. Viva la difference!

Check out Lisa’s blog at What It’s Like and her personal website at www.lisaklink.com.

What It’s Like posts are featured in THE STORY SPOT’s “Good Reads” widget in the sidebar. Find her under the menu with other great writers’ sites.

When stories stray from the protagonist and the events of her journey to serve up “interesting” secondary characters’ lives and/or large, intangible world events, the result is often a fuzzy narrative that doesn’t captivate its audience.

The elemental principle here: Focus on the Protagonist.

Holding focus on a single person throughout a narrative satisfies our unconscious, innate need to relate to a single life outside of our own as a means to finding deeper truths within ourselves. Stories mirror us. It’s one of the reasons we’ve gathered around campfires for millennia and it’s why our most resonant stories follow a single hero as they struggle to break through their obstacles.

A recent screening of Love and Other Disasters (written and directed by Alek Keshishian) offers a good example of narrative fuzzy focus. This film’s logline:

A hyperactive and high-fashion American transplant living in London and working for Vogue magazine does her best to enhance the lives of those around her while remaining blissfully unaware of the man who longs to profess his true love to her.

So that puts our focus on the girl as protagonist. The film, however, plays out around her roommate’s search for true love as embodied in a chance encounter with one man. And truly, his storyline was the most compelling. Why? For one, he was the one with the problem and with something to lose. He was the one for whom some life-changing external event forced change in his life. He was the one around whom friends rallied support and, lastly, he was the one who learned a life lesson (before she) in the end. Sounds like the making of a hero, no?

Read on »

Most troubles in an ailing story can be traced back to a little something called the throughline*. Throughline is the motor in your story’s boat. It’s the single, pervasive concept that not only guides every event and action but also the one thing to which everything must directly relate.

A tall order? You betcha.

So what is it? Throughline is the answer to the question, “What does my protagonist want?” or if the hero is not conscious of their desires, “What does my protagonist need?” The answer may not be apparent on a first pass if you’re the writer (nor is it expected to be) but, at some point, writers and their story consultants need to hunker down and tease it out.
Read on »

The “Logic Nazi” strikes! Craig Mazin over at The Artful Writer posts about the workings of the little left brain freak within us all who is preoccupied with fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together when watching films (and reading stories, of course).

You know that curmudgeon. Endlessly picking up clues and slotting them into some ancient, predetermined framework. A few pieces are allowed to poke out here and there but let one raise its ugly head too far and look out! Your whole waking dream is shattered. And bitterly so.

…you can only suffer so many shots below the waterline before the ship starts to sink. If the audience’s illusion of intention is repeatedly or grossly challenged by logic problems, they will revolt.

Thanks Craig. I thought I was the only one who just couldn’t get by the “magnetic thing” in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

By the way, if your story consultant isn’t a “Logic Nazi” then you’re in deep trouble. I’m just sayin’.

The Logic Nazi at The Artful Writer