Writer's Block Be-Gone

Since I've been doing more experimenting with fiction and poetry writing lately, I've been keeping my eyes out for any ideas for brainstorming techniques. These are my 3 favorite ones I've discovered recently.

1) Label a piece of notebook paper with the letters A to Z, one letter per line. Write down random words that start with each letter that come to mind. When you've filled the page, go back through your list and review the potential for literary inspiration of each item. Circle the ones which you think would provide a good jumping off point for a story or poem. Then do a free association page of writing using that word for inspiration, and see where it leads you from there.

(Source of Inspiration: David Leviathan's "Dictionary of Love")

2) This is one that I found works particularly well for me, with my journalism background, but I imagine it could be useful to writers with no experiences with investigative reporting as well. Pretend you are interviewing yourself for one of those "celebrity profile" features commonly found in magazines. Then answer the questions you ask yourself. It helps to also keep in the back of the mind the purpose that you're using this pretend interview for: inspiration for future fiction. So you'll want to include things in your answers that could help lead you to plots, settings, themes, and/or characters for future fiction or poetry.

(Source of Inspiration: Chuck Klosterman)

3) If you're trying to write a story with lots of dialogue--or a play/screenplay-- it works well to have your characters be loosely (or not so loosely, depending on your preference) based upon people you actually know in real life. That way, you can effectively imagine how they would respond to a given situation, or to a particular question/statement from another character. I almost always start out my stories by just writing down a "typical" conversation that would be had by me and a group of friends, having each of them talk about something that my friends typically talk about and in the tone and diction they tend to use.

(Source of Inspiration: Douglas Coupland's Generation X and JPod)