Post by account_disabled on Dec 28, 2023 6:26:48 GMT 2
How many times have we gotten stuck during a writing session ? It happened to me often, especially at the beginning, when I took a sheet of paper and started writing my story starting from a simple idea. No plot, no structure – I didn't even know what the structure of a story was – and above all no character sheets, no documentation, no setting. Writer's block , on this basis, was the least I should have expected. The specter of writer's block hasn't loomed over my writing for a long time: since I started writing my stories differently. Since I started structuring my stories . What really is writer's block? Before we talk about how to overcome writer's block , we need to define this problem. There are 2 forms of writer's block: Idea block : the writer doesn't write because he doesn't have any ideas.
Inspiration – which I have never believed in – doesn't come. The block in the story : the writer doesn't know how to continue his story. He's stuck somewhere, maybe in the first Special Data chapter, maybe halfway through the story, and can't move forward. If a writer doesn't have ideas, he's not a writer. The profession of a writer finds correspondence in the creation of ideas , the activity of the writer is carried out above all in having ideas continuously . So in this article I will not consider writer's block due to a lack of ideas: it is not a real block, but a pure inability to find ideas for stories . How to overcome writer's block with the 5-act structure Write in one go or write following a structure? There is no one way better than another, it is the results that count.
There are authors who are comfortable writing entire novels in one go , based on an idea. When I tried to write novels this way (7!), I didn't get more than a few pages. Obviously they are all novels that have been abandoned for years, and I no longer have any interest in picking them up again. So writing novels in one go doesn't work for me. It's working to write them with a well-defined structure . 3 or 5 act structure ? We most often talk about a 3-act structure, based on the Aristotelian formula: beginning, middle and end. But for me it's easier to extend it to 5. Extend the 3 acts to 5 acts In Freytag's dramatic arc , some time ago, we saw that a story can be divided into 5 parts: Context Conflict Climax Closure Conclusion When I get an idea and want to develop it, I always start with 3 simple steps: a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. But a story is much more complex than 3 acts.
Inspiration – which I have never believed in – doesn't come. The block in the story : the writer doesn't know how to continue his story. He's stuck somewhere, maybe in the first Special Data chapter, maybe halfway through the story, and can't move forward. If a writer doesn't have ideas, he's not a writer. The profession of a writer finds correspondence in the creation of ideas , the activity of the writer is carried out above all in having ideas continuously . So in this article I will not consider writer's block due to a lack of ideas: it is not a real block, but a pure inability to find ideas for stories . How to overcome writer's block with the 5-act structure Write in one go or write following a structure? There is no one way better than another, it is the results that count.
There are authors who are comfortable writing entire novels in one go , based on an idea. When I tried to write novels this way (7!), I didn't get more than a few pages. Obviously they are all novels that have been abandoned for years, and I no longer have any interest in picking them up again. So writing novels in one go doesn't work for me. It's working to write them with a well-defined structure . 3 or 5 act structure ? We most often talk about a 3-act structure, based on the Aristotelian formula: beginning, middle and end. But for me it's easier to extend it to 5. Extend the 3 acts to 5 acts In Freytag's dramatic arc , some time ago, we saw that a story can be divided into 5 parts: Context Conflict Climax Closure Conclusion When I get an idea and want to develop it, I always start with 3 simple steps: a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. But a story is much more complex than 3 acts.