Saturday, November 07, 2009

National Novel Writing Month: Writer's Block Interludes

I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year and I discovered a nifty way to cure writer's block.
Every time i get stuck, I just throw in a random interlude that has nothing to do with the story, delete it, and keep writing. It helps when I can just have fun with it, and helps relieve my own tension when I'm writing a particularly difficult or serious scene.

So, without further ado, here are a couple of interludes I've used so far.

Writer's block interlude #1: Suddenly, out of nowhere, a shark jumped out of the water and swallowed Trent whole! Abigail jumped up, grabbed a knife out of the canoe, and dived into the water after it. She swam toward the menacing shark and plunged the knife into its belly, killing it, and freeing Trent. They swam back to the surface and got back into the boat.

Writer's block interlude #2: Abigail woke the next morning to the sound of a zombie crashing into her room. She screamed, what else would she do? But then she realized how slowly the zombie was shambling toward her. She managed to step around him while he took a lumbering swing at her, and walked out into the hall. She reached into the hall closet and pulled out the rifle she kept there in case of situations like this one. She went back into her room while the zombie was still trying to slowly turn around and catch up to her. She took aim at his head and fired. The zombie’s head exploded all over her room. “Crap,” she said, “Now I have to clean all this up.”

No, these won't actually end up in the story, and actually have nothing to do with the story itself, but it's fun and reminds me of way back when my friends and I would sit at a computer, taking turns writing a completely random and nonsensical story, and having fun with it while we were at it.

Backyard Pareidolia