The Wall

Writers Block Begins

My story is currently finished up to a point where the group are stood in front of a literal wall, trying to gain entry to some ancient temple grounds. It is here that I’ve come unstuck. I am both literally and figuratively at a brick wall in this process.

When I had the story all planned out in class it became increasingly obvious that it wouldn’t fit into the 7500-word limit of the course. With this in mind, I’d adjusted my plan and my story for the Anthology we produced in class now just covers the formation of the group and overcoming the first obstacle on their path.

My classmates will shortly read the end of the story which essentially says "sorry, I didn't finish it all, please go to my website to find out when I will." To any of you who did in fact come here I will absolutely finish the story, I just need to battle that pesky sentient fog. 

I want to turn this into a novel and while everything has flowed so far this temple section is the place I need to expand my initial thoughts the most. The earlier part naturally padded itself out almost as I wrote it, but I’m now stuck. I dislike my original ideas for the temple, I need more, and I have a dozen pages of random notes.

This is the part where I need to unlock my writer brain and get over the block. To do this I’ve decided to go back through the course again and see if I can repeat some of the exercises. I’ve looked at the building blocks of my story again and asked myself questions based on them as follows:

• Idea generation for the temple section – What might your typically find in a temple? What tropes are based around temple exploration?

I am approaching this part as a mini story in itself by following the narrative curve and looking at:

• Inciting incidents – Why are they going inside? Don’t lose focus of the quest.
• Goals – What are they looking to achieve? Primary and secondary goals to explore here.
• Themes – Do we want a lesson to be learned? Do we want to subvert expectations or rife off tropes?
• Obstacles – What stands in the way? What obstacles do we see in temples?
• Consequences – What happens if they fail? Keep consequences in mind and refer back to them.
• Plot twists – I had a plot twist. Does this still fit? When is it best unveiled?
• Character arcs – Does the experience change our cast?

Once I have these notes I can go back through the outline structure and piece them together as a story within a story. At least, that’s the hope.