freckledmccree:

ittybittytatertot:

melindawrites:

ittybittytatertot:

Some of the best writing advice I ever got was if you’re stuck on a scene or a line, the problem is actually about 10 lines back and that’s saved me from writer’s block so many times.

I feel like I need an elaborate explanation

Often times, I find myself stuck on what a character should say next or what should happen in a scene to connect A to B or so on. When this happens, I fall into the trap of writing and rewriting the same few lines over and over, and becoming more and more dissatisfied every time until I give up. 

But problem is almost never actually whatever line I’m trying to write at the moment; the issue is the stuff leading up to the line. Maybe there are structural issues with the set up, maybe I wrote a bit of dialogue that was out of character leading to a discussion that doesn’t make sense, maybe I’m missing a vital piece of exposition or expositing too much. It could be a lot of things, but the important part of the advice is to look back and be willing to consider changes to something earlier in the work (even if you’re really attached to like a piece of dialogue or a particular sentence or something) instead of trying to find a way to force out a scene that’s not working.

This also scales up. Act Three problems are actually Act One problems. Whether it’s your line, your scene, your sequence, your act, your structure, it’s usually the same issue: you’re struggling to resolve because you made an error in your set-up.