1. Watch Game of Thrones clips on youtube for inspiration.


2. Read a book similar to what you're working on or a book that you like for inspiration. In this case I've reread Stephen King's It and a few books from Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.


3. Read Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey or look up The Hero's Journey online to see where my hero is on the cycle.


4. If I have enough pages, look back and edit my old writing to remind myself that I'm not deluded, I actually like my work.
   

What do you do?

I do literally nothing with the chapter for a few days go back and re-read it. Probably not the best but, it does the job for now.

If you are stuck writing chapter 4, then start writing chapter 7 or chapter 10.  That is the beauty of an outline.

Good luck and keep writing!

Yea I just skip ahead and start writing the next chapter 90% of the time.

*this kills the release schedule*

I have a fairly extensive outline as well as a character outline for every single character describing who they are and what they want.

I know how several of the main story threads end and could write the ending right now except that I keep discovering interesting details as I write and I don't want to constantly have to keep revising it.

When I get stuck it's often while writing the next thing on the outline. I'll look at it and realize that it feels dramatically boring to me. More like a statement of facts lacking in tension or suspense. Usually it means that I need to restructure the scene so that I enter at a point in the outline that causes the reader to wonder what happened in a way that makes them curious as opposed to hostile. I think this means finding a point where I can insert an interesting setup that actively gets the reader to ask a question, an interesting payoff from a former setup, and an interesting description of something usually of the world-building type or a character reveal. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of writing a reveal I've been planning and then I'll realize that having them not talk about it is far more interesting than the conversation that I had planned.

I tend to watch Game Of Thrones clips a lot because they have well structured entrances and exits into scenes with really good payoffs, like watching the scene where Oberyn Martel agrees to champion Tyrion after telling the story of how he first saw T. when he was a child and how that was amplified by Bron visiting Tyrion earlier and telling him why he wouldn't fight for him.

You are correct about writing ahead though. Now that I'm 228 pages in I definitely have a feweven that aren't going to change no matter what I discover. I need to identify them and work on them when the next chapter in the line is giving me a hard time.

What I do if I'm stuck writing? Here's an easy instruction manual:

1.) Make space in a room, be sure that there are no objects, that can be dangerous nearby
2.) Put a mat or a big towel on the ground
3.) Move your joints a bit, try to warm them up
4.) Lay on top the mat/towel
5.) Flay your limbs around
6.) Scream and cry
7.) Yell at the world, how unfair it is
8.) Hit the ground with your feet and hands repeatedly
9.) Cry out your pain, get more and more enraged
10.) Repeat steps 6.) to 9.) several times
11.) Make a break
12.) Stand up, drink something
13.) Move your ass back to your PC
14.) Write
15.) If writing is not possible, start from step 1.)

This is called the "Temper Tantrum Tactic" and it may work for you. Not for me though. =3

I would use the temper tantrum method except I'm too weak. I'd have to work up to it, going from silently crying for a week or two and escalate from there.

'Vze3vdnp ' pid='829843' dateline='1510595701' Wrote: I would use the temper tantrum method except I'm too weak. I'd have to work up to it, going from silently crying for a week or two and escalate from there.

Hey, everyone got his own style. Mine starts with swapping each step with something else! Everyone can throw a tantrum! :D

I go read or watch on youtube some ancient myths for inspiration. Recently it helped fantastically creating one character that I feel atm is the strongest in my story by far.

I stop writing and sleep on it. By the next day, new ideas pop out automatically usually.
Also walking works great. I like to take walks in the woods, and my mind wanders. I happen to unfold the plotlines as I walk.
And planning of course. If I have an idea for an element I write it down, so that the file will remember it for me.
Also high level planning of the various hierarchies of plotlines. In a story, certain things are supposed to happen in certain moments, this help finding a solution when there are too many possibilities.

Take a sheet of paper and follow these three steps for the next chapter:

What are your goals for the next chapter? Write the word goals and come up with 3 to 5 different goals. Here's an example:

Goals

1. I want tension in the story.
2. I want an awesome action scene.
3. I want the main character to have some kind of meaningful growth.
4. I want to move the placement of the mc somewhere else.
5. I want something brutal and horrific in my story.

Underneath these goals, write out the word, "Methods." Underline it then list a method for how you can obtain each goal. You would be amazed at how simple it is to fix crippling and complex issues when you do this. Here's an example:

Methods

1. I can inject tension by making a fight scene that is very close. I can add a bounty hunter who mistakes the mc for someone else.
2. I already added an action scene, and since it's a close call, it will be easy to make it awesome.
3. Since the MC is experiencing a life or death situation in the action scene, he will gain a firmer awareness of his mortality, making him a more serious individual in the future.
4. After the fight, he travels towards his father's home who he always butted heads with because the mc was a joker and his father was super serious. Now that the MC understands how dangerous life is, he meets his father and they reconnect over the experience.
5. After finishing his heartfelt moment with his father, the son leaves for the town to get some supplies. Whenever he comes back, the bounty hunter guild has tracked him down and found his father. Now the MC watches as the villians slit the throat of his father. He watches him choke on his own blood before the mercenaries come for the MC.

In a bought of wrath and rage, the MC forgets his joking nature, channeling into the warrior blood coursing through him. He crushes and destroys the mercenary guild. He tears their corpses apart, his foosteps splashing in puddles of their blood. He grins at their deaths.

One mercenary escapes. This sets the MC up against the entire guild of mercenaries, and gives the mc an awesome backstory. Boom. There's your ideation process 101.

'Monsoon117' pid='831118' dateline='1513633457' Wrote: Take a sheet of paper and follow these three steps for the next chapter:

What are your goals for the next chapter? Write the word goals and come up with 3 to 5 different goals. Here's an example:

Goals

1. I want tension in the story.
2. I want an awesome action scene.
3. I want the main character to have some kind of meaningful growth.
4. I want to move the placement of the mc somewhere else.
5. I want something brutal and horrific in my story.

Underneath these goals, write out the word, "Methods." Underline it then list a method for how you can obtain each goal. You would be amazed at how simple it is to fix crippling and complex issues when you do this. Here's an example:

Methods

1.  I can inject tension by making a fight scene that is very close. I can add a bounty hunter who mistakes the mc for someone else.
2. I already added an action scene, and since it's a close call, it will be easy to make it awesome.
3. Since the MC is experiencing a life or death situation in the action scene, he will gain a firmer awareness of his mortality, making him a more serious individual in the future.
4. After the fight, he travels towards his father's home who he always butted heads with because the mc was a joker and his father was super serious. Now that the MC understands how dangerous life is, he meets his father and they reconnect over the experience.
5. After finishing his heartfelt moment with his father, the son leaves for the town to get some supplies. Whenever he comes back, the bounty hunter guild has tracked him down and found his father. Now the MC watches as the villians slit the throat of his father. He watches him choke on his own blood before the mercenaries come for the MC.

In a bought of wrath and rage, the MC forgets his joking nature, channeling into the warrior blood coursing through him. He crushes and destroys the mercenary guild. He tears their corpses apart, his foosteps splashing in puddles of their blood. He grins at their deaths.

One mercenary escapes. This sets the MC up against the entire guild of mercenaries, and gives the mc an awesome backstory. Boom. There's your ideation process 101.

I like your idea of making a list and asking yourself certain questions if a scene is annoying you and you don't know why. At the end of the day if a scene feels off  there aren't an infinite number of things that could be going wrong. The problem can only be because of what a character said, did, thought, saw, or an issue with the character themselves.

I work on multiple stories at one time. At the moment, I'm writing 4 stories. One of them is getting an awful lot of my attention, but when I get stuck on it I toggle over to one of the other three, read the last few paragraphs I'd written in it, and try to put something on THAT page, or the next chapter of THAT story .

Usually a few hours (up to a few days) of that and I feel a sense of accomplishment that lets me open back up to the story I was stuck on to begin with. It's worked pretty well so far, for me, and means I continue to make progress on more than one thing (even if the others are incremental).

What I would do was put working on that book aside, forget about it, and do some work on the backup book for a while, which is a totally different story to the main book being worked on. Usually, after a bit something pops in the head that's not suitable for the backup book, or just doesn't feel like it fits in, then I realise it is just what I need for the main book. Doent always work, but that's what I do.