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candyland4life

on 11/15/2008

New writer needs help

I use to enjoy writting in high school and have not done much since.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get started?
I have great ideas but now it's time to get started I have writers block.

Braygood

on 11/23/2008

You cold try and add on to my screenplay "Finis". I'm looking for anybody to add onto that.

mattwhitrock

on 02/04/2009

Personally I don't use this technique but it's been known to help young writers or beginner writers with writers block.

Start out with a set of index cards, and break them up into 5 groups. Each group should have between 3 and 6 cards in it (its up to you how many cards you use, it only depends on how much time you want to spend doing this)

Take your first set of cards and create a character for each them. These characters can be anything you want, a bigit vietnam war veteran whose recently lost his wife, a scrawny highschool student with aspirations of becoming a famous wrestler, a martian with 6 eyes who just found out hes pregnant, whatever

the second set of cards are your locations, an abandoned church in the ghetto, a brand new high school, a dilapidated space station, whatever

the next set is for props and objects, a golden serpent staff, a gun that only backfires, a ligthsaber, etc.

the fourth set is for scenerios, a church running out of money, a monster attacking a city, a house burning down

and the final set are for themes, love conquers all, an act of selflessness can save the day, everyone has to grow up, etc

Whatever you put on the cards doesn't matter, but they shouldn't be outrageous and entirely disassociated like some of my examples are. The only thing that matters about the cards is that you're putting things on them that you care enough to write about them.

Then you take these cards and start making random sets out of them. You might end up with something like

1. a desperate widower comedian
2. a church in the ghetto
3. a giant dog
4. a protagonist who is running out of money
5. you have to be yourself in a world where everyone is the same

Then you use these elements to make up a story. So i just made up a story about a comedian whose getting over the death of his wife who has to somehow use a giant dog to raise money for a church before it has to be shut down, and the story is all tied together through the common theme that you must at all times remain true to yourself.

granted it needs a lot of work, the character needs motivation, an arc and a through line, but its a start.

Hopefully by applying this technique you can over come your temporary spout of writers block, and if not you can take my story about the comedian using a giant dog to raise money for a church, i dont care.

good luck and if you need any more advice shoot me a message

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