Finding Inspiration for Creative Writing: Tips for Getting Past Writer's Block

Everyone is afflicted with writers' block at some point in their lives, whether it occurs while their writing a novel, poem or essay. Nothing is worse than having worked on a story for weeks, only to wake up one day and have no idea how you want to word a sentence, or in what direction you want to take the story. I can't remember how many stories I never completed because of this, but over the years I have found some ways to deal with the writer's block or even defeat it completely.

Here are a list of the techniques that work for me:

When you start writing a story and you get stuck, map out what you want to do. Usually if you get stuck in the midst of writing a story, it has more to do with prose than anything else. Make a short outline detailing what directions you want to or can go. Create a tree, with all sorts of branches representing all of the possibilities the story can take, and then try to start writing like that. If that doesn't work, then just try to write as simply as possible, then go back and revise it later.

Sometimes there is just a complete lack of imagination, but in most cases I find this easier to solve than getting stuck mid-sentence. There are lots of venues from which you can draw creative material. Try listening to some music with meaningful lyrics, watching a movie, or read a book. Most stories are based on fairytales, so don't be afraid to read some yourself. They can lend a lot of creative insight so far as character development and the general plot outline.

Other times, all you might need is a break. If you're finding that you have trouble writing after a couple days of marathon-length writing sessions, it might be because you are overworking your brain. Sit back, look at your piece from a larger perspective, and think about how you can clean it up. Reread what you wrote, and make sure everything fits in place correctly so far as how the character would react. These exercises can help draw you back into the story, instead of droning on the keyboard and drilling sentence after sentence out of your brain.

Also, sometimes I find that writing down dialogue that you hear in public places or even just jotting down descriptions of what you see can help keep your creative spirit alive. They might not offer quick remedies to writer's block, but doing those things can definitely help prevent it from occurring by keeping your mind sharp and ready to write on a whim about anything. It also helps develop your use of dialogue and allows you to better analyze how well a description fits a scene.