Yesterday you had ideas, but today you’re staring at a blinking cursor. Here are a few things to try when the words aren’t coming.

Start with something that actually happened.

When I am stuck, I will sometimes get restarted by documenting a nonfiction event that happened to me, or even a story someone else has told me (changing the names, of course).

Then I start thinking about what could have made the situation more interesting or exciting. The end result is always wildly different.

Start as a reporter, then put on the story-teller hat and embellish.

Open your IDEAS file.

You are keeping an IDEAS file, right?

These are the half-formed concepts that aren’t quite stories yet. Mine are often two-sentence summaries of a scene or concept that is nowhere close to a story, but can often provide a starting point, or prime the pump for start down another path.

Something that didn’t interest me six months ago might look different to me today (usually embarrassingly so). Two unrelated entries could even end up in the same story.

Here are some examples from my idea file (and yes, most of these, if not all, are terrible)

• A company takes keeping data on employees to the extreme. Knowing when they go to the bathroom and how much toilet paper they use, for example.

• Sci Fi story about how improving athletes by reducing “unnecessary” weight goes too far. Starts with bone shaving and removing vestigial organs to temporarily removing stomach and intestines, skin and ultimately at the end of the story the whole head.

• Some things only exist to bring other things together. I like to call these things a catalyst, you know, like in chemistry, something that is needed for a reaction, but is never used up itself. A lot of these things are around for dark purposes. Purposes that most of the world never knows, and for good reason. (I have no idea where I was going with this one.)

• Story that exposes the fact that the government is using flu and colds to inoculate its population against biological warfare.

• Story about a guy who is using robot(s) to do breaking and entering and hold ups. This creates a difficult to track back to the criminal issue. Could be told from a gumshoe point of view.  Issues would likely be similar to kidnapping money drops where they have to track the robot and the stolen goods. (We may not be far off from actually seeing this happen.)

Write ANYTHING for half an hour.

This is all about getting you ass in the chair and forcing yourself to just write.

For those thirty minutes, the words don’t have to be good or make a lot of sense but you do need to write something. A lot of times this is just enough to get you going. I am often very surprised by what comes out of this.

Screenwriter John August uses a similar approach: he sets a twenty-minute timer and commits to working until it rings, with permission to stop afterward. I think the secret in what he does is that the commitment feels small and manageable.

Do something outside your normal routine.

Visit somewhere unfamiliar or do something outside of your normal routine. This create a new environment for you to see and wakes up your brain to start taking notice.

On Scriptnotes, Craig Mazin describes imagining scenes while walking or showering, then writing once he knows what happens. Thinking through a scene can be useful work, even before you start typing.

Leave some breadcrumbs to make the next start easier.

In my Masterclass post, I mentioned leaving yourself a prompt for the next session, moving past difficult passages with “TBD,” and allowing the first draft to be rough.

Ernest Hemingway described stopping while he still knew what would happen next, giving himself a way back into the story the next morning. Try leaving a few notes about the next scene before closing your current document.

What helps you to start writing again after you’re stuck? Let me know in the comments below.

-James