The psychology of starting a piece of writing

Every writer must wear two hats, writer and editor. All cases of writer's block, no matter at what part of the process they occur, are because your internal editor is overriding your internal writer. So all solutions to writer's block involve finding a way of circumventing your internal editor.

There are many different psychological tricks people try for this. But, ironically, the most effective advice I ever encountered for solving this issue is physiological. If you write at the time of day when you are usually least alert (morning for night owls, night for early birds), your internal editor goes to sleep, and you can write freely, in a kind of half-dream state. It sounds odd ("this one weird trick!"), but I've found it dramatically increased my rate of production and reduced my writer's block. Nor does there seem to be a noticeable difference in the quality of the writing.

Other potentially useful tricks include: Deliberately writing pages of complete nonsense ("priming the engine"), writing just one paragraph before bed the night before ("breaking the seal"), always leaving off in the middle of a sentence or the middle of an exciting scene ("keeping the engine running"), and starting from a writing prompt or exercise ("cranking the starter").

posted over 6 years ago

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Chris Sunami‭

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How do you start writing? You sit down and write. No matter how trite, no matter how derivative - you write. You give it your honest best effort. Then, the next day, you give what you've written an honest look. You note what's good, what's bad. Then, you either continue writing, edit yesterday's work and then continue, or put it in a folder of "no good", and start again. Rinse and repeat. (Don't delete "bad work" - you might be able to draw something from it later. And it's not like we lack space nowadays - it's all on the computer.)

Compare your experience to someone who wants to play Rachmaninov's concerti, but has never played the piano at all. He touches a key, and doesn't like the sound of it. So he stops. He loves the piano, but his first attempts sound horrible, so he doesn't touch the piano any more, he just wishes to play Rachmaninov.
The way this person might some day play Rachmaninov is if he sits down and practices every day, listens to what's wrong, corrects himself, and keeps going. Then, after a decade of hard work, he would play Rachmaninov, if not well, then at least tolerably.

posted over 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

Wait.

I am a discovery writer, meaning, I do not outline or plot or plan ahead, except in a minor way. I often don't know where the first Act ends, or what complications and setbacks will arrive, I definitely do not have a list of characters, or attributes, or histories. I invent them as I go.

Before ever putting fingers to keyboard,

I come up with my stories by imagining a strong character, and her dilemma, and some "partner" for her to interact with in the story. (villain, friend, boss, lover, teacher, parent, or some combination). She will generally have something she is exceptionally good at, and something she is rather poor at.

Her dilemma is going to be first introduced or described near the 10% mark (of total pages). She will undertake her mission (to solve the dilemma) near the 15% mark, she must engage with her partner in some way by then. The first Act will end near the 20-30% mark.

I don't know, when I begin writing, all the details of this, my story is simple enough to carry in my head. I don't have a page count, I just know these % are (IMO of course) how good writing happens to turn out.

So what I need is a good scene that can introduce my character, who she is, give the reader some idea about what she is good it, and what she is NOT that good at, but through the lens of her thoughts and feelings. I want them to engage with my character, even if she is a superhero, NOT through a high action scene (I think those are boring without knowing who the characters are), but definitely doing something from her normal routine, still having some kind of throwaway conflict (e.g. being late for work, having no hot water, her car won't start). This isn't life threatening or changing. In every time period, on every planet, every person struggles with minor conflicts.

That is my opening scene. That is how I will introduce my hero to the reader, she is proactive (doing something) and it has to be interesting enough to pull the reader into her "status quo" world, this is the stuff she does every day, how she reacts and deals with conflict, how she has fun, perhaps who her friends are and who she loves. That is what I want to show before I put her in the blender. The opening scene is a leader that draws the reader in so she will give a crap about our hero's dilemma when that disrupts her life.

I don't begin writing until I think I know what that scene is, what my hero is doing. The first word on the blank page is always my hero's name, she is doing something physically active (not sitting and thinking, not philosophizing). I may change that sentence around, but my hero's name will be in the first sentence, doing something physical.

The reason I don't have a problem with the first page, or first many pages, is because I have imagined how my first scene begins and how I accomplish my goal of introducing the character.

I do not jump into her story-driving dilemma. We need to build her character a little, build the world a little, and build why this dilemma will matter to her, why she cannot just walk away from it. Give yourself a few dozen pages; in an 80,000 word book, this should be roughly 8000 words; at the standard of 250 words per page, from "first word" to "beginning of dilemma" is 32 pages.

While you are building these foundations of your story, do not forget conflict. It can be tempting to just start dumping characteristics and world facts and all that, but resist that. As a rule of thumb there should be conflict on every page, be it misunderstanding, disagreement, violence, something gone wrong, something of sub-par quality. The toaster doesn't work and she improvises with the broiler in the oven. Or the milk has turned and she just glopped lumps of it onto her bowl of cereal, so she is going without breakfast. Or this is the reason she stops at the donut shop on the way to work, and meets Jack standing in line there.

Create conflict, it creates new actions and new decisions. The conflict can foreshadow the main dilemma, if that is possible. Typically that is also something that has gone wrong in her life, so you might be able to find a domestic problem that resonates: A stove top oil fire, easily extinguished but making a big mess, for something later described as a metaphorical fire (like a revolution or hostile corporate takeover): It is up to her to extinguish both.

When you sit down to that blank page, already have in your head your introductory scene, and your hero's introduction action, and ... type her name.

posted over 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Amadeus‭

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