Writer’s Block

  • How did we get here?

    One of the most important questions you must answer in your story is one many people never ask:

    How did we get here?

    And it’s as valid to ask when you’re starting your story so you know exactly the story you need to write to have the ending you want…

    …as it is when you’re just starting your entire story itself.

    Everyone starts from somewhere, and that somewhere is what defines who they are, what they think and how they see the world.

    So if you don’t know that…

    …you’re really going to be leaving your story to chance…

    …and making the entire process a lot harder for yourself than it could be.

    I won’t lie. Some people enjoy that part. Some people “just write” whatever they have in their head, and they leave it to the editing phase to figure out what it really means and to stitch it into something coherent and worth experiencing.

    But, in fairness…

    …that’s a bit like setting up the film crew in random locations around the city…

    …shooting for a month…

    …and trying to stitch together a story out of whatever they captured.

    That’s not how movies or shows are made—for good reason.

    And it’s not the most effective way to write a great story either.

    A great story starts at the end—at least generally speaking. That doesn’t mean you have to be exact and can’t tweak or change things.

    But it does mean you need to make some decisions.

    What will your world look like at the end?

    Why was your journey important?

    Who are the characters now?

    All these are pretty fundamental to helping you craft a great story, because each one of those questions sets up a sequence of dozens – maybe hundreds – of questions that must be answered if you’re going to write a story that makes the ending both inevitable and earned.

    Even if you’re starting at the beginning, the same questions apply. In fact, those same questions can help you determine exactly where the beginning of your story is supposed to be.

    And the less clarity you have on the answer…

    …and the less consistently you can answer it…

    …the more likely you will be to write yourself into a corner—hours, days, weeks or even months from now.

    One of the biggest problems I see in the stories I experience is the writers failing to answer those questions in sufficient detail.

    Because at some point…normally when you least expect it…

    …their story suddenly breaks.

    They reach for the plot armor.

    There’s a mysterious savior from out of the blue.

    And you’re expected to just swallow it and move on.

    But, as an audience, you don’t. And you can’t—unless the story is pretty crap to begin with and you’ve already gotten to the point where you’re picking apart the plot…the characters…and the inconsistencies in their world.

    You’ve done this.

    I’ve done this.

    But do you want *your* audience to do this?

    I don’t think so—and neither do I.

    That’s why I gave you the simple rules of the Breakthrough Scene in the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ instantly available to you right here:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    Because 9 times outta 10…

    …I bet it’s going to come down to that one simple question.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Moving beyond “making stuff up”

    If you have an idea for a great story, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. You want to just sit down and “get it out,” because you’re just sure it’s great.

    But there’s a problem.

    Because there’s more to writing a great story than having an idea, or just sitting down and “making stuff up.”

    And I’m not just talking about character sketches and plots—or even beat sequences.

    I’m talking about creating a consistent reality for the world in which your story takes place.

    One of the biggest traps I see people fall into when trying to write their story is that they don’t really understand the way the world works.

    And if you don’t understand the way the world works…

    …you can’t anticipate how the people, places and things in your world are going to behave and evolve as your characters experience them.

    Behavior and the evolution of people, places and things isn’t random.

    It’s not subject to your imagination, although there’s certainly room for that too.

    I’m not suggesting you can’t “make stuff up.”

    However, what I’m saying is that regardless of the magic, future technology or mythical beasts you include in your world…

    …there are some fundamental rules they follow.

    Rules you have to define if you want your world to be consistent.

    Rules you have to follow if you want to keep your audience enthralled in your story.

    The reason people say “write what you know” is because you implicitly pick up and understand these rules by experience.

    The more you’ve interacted with someone or something…

    …the better you are at being able to predict what it might do…

    …and the better chance you’ll have of ensuring your story sets up the factors that believably influences the way it behaves.

    But this doesn’t mean you’re lost if you’re writing about people, places or professions you’ve never experienced—or are working in worlds that are entirely imagined.

    It just means you have to be more conscious of the rules and where they come from.

    And while they aren’t that hard, you can get a sense of these rules in the structure of the templates in the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ itself.

    Establishing and surfacing those rules are why there are specific questions for each of the characters, the problem and the environment.

    They aren’t random.

    They’re what you need to know to discover or enforce those rules—even for new and novel situations or environments.

    But if you’re still struggling to figure out how to “write the rules” of your story’s reality…

    …then maybe the Blueprint can help.

    Get your copy of the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint right here:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    Because once you’ve decided the way the world you’ve built works…

    …that’s when the stories truly start to write themselves.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Untangling fear and writer’s block

    Do any kind of investigation on writer’s block, and you’re going to find a lot of advice and potential solutions for the problem. You’re also going to find a lot of people talking about why it happens, and one of the most interesting reasons I’ve seen is fear.

    That’s right. Now, there’s some psychological basis to this, because most of our other reasons for not doing something are in some way built on a foundation of fear of some kind. However, while you might be…

    …afraid what you write won’t be as good as what’s in your head…

    …afraid that it’s not as good as someone else’s work…

    …afraid that you might actually be successful…

    …afraid you’ll have to share things with the world it may not like…

    …or even afraid that you’ll have to change yourself and the way you see the world…

    …most of the time, this isn’t what I see stopping people.

    Most of the time, it’s their relationship with their story. And specifically, because they’ve lost their connection to their story, it’s pretty obvious why they’re stuck.

    There’s nothing to write about.

    It’s not that you’re afraid—of any of those things above.

    You literally are in a separate “room” in your head from the story you’re trying to write.

    And until you reconnect with it properly, you’re going to end up staring down the blinking cursor that’s taunting you at the top of an empty page.

    So…how?

    Well, one of the first things you need to understand is how your characters behave as people. Sure, there’s some specifics, but there are some critical things that guide people’s behavior.

    Based on the deep study I’ve done in psychology and human behavior over the last 20 years, it’s easy to assume that people are hard to predict.

    This is true to a point.

    But there’s still only a small set of reactions you can expect in any situation. In fact it’s smaller than you might think.

    And these reactions are driven by the way your characters see themselves, the world they’re in and the people and the events in it.

    The best part is that this can change—either temporarily or permanently.

    Everyone has a bad day where everyone is a threat and everything is a problem. That’s not random.

    That’s a function of the environment you’re in and how easy it is for you to get what you want.

    And if you don’t know what your characters want and what they believe is necessary to get it?

    It’s not fear that will stop the words from coming. It’s just missing connections.

    Because as soon as you connect those dots, understanding not just your character’s background, but what drives their thinking…

    …then my experience is that you can’t write fast enough.

    And stopping before 6am becomes a much bigger problem than staring at a blank page.

    The good news is that it’s easier to fill in these blanks than you might think, and helping you do that is one of the main reasons I created the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ in the first place.

    It gives you some prompt questions to help you create your story’s breakthrough scene (or scenes), and it just so happens…

    …that these prompt questions are a pretty good cure for writer’s block as well.

    To get your copy of the Blueprint, just go here:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    I don’t want you afraid to write your story, and I don’t want you stuck staring at a blank page. You might be afraid of a lot of things, but I don’t believe that’s what’s holding you back.

    I believe you can beat your blank page by rediscovering your connection to your story, because once you do…

    …you’ll be back in the groove, and your story will be desperate to get onto the page.

    All you have to do is let it happen.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Stuck with a scene? Hit the pub with your characters!

    One of the things I see as a recurring theme when people are stuck with a particular scene is that they think their “writer’s block” is caused by things external to the story. I hear people say:

    • they don’t know what happens next,
    • they think they aren’t on the right schedule, or
    • they think they’ve “run out of ideas.”

    That’s where all the typical advice like “walk away,” “write something else” or “read something” typically comes from. Or, of course, to set up a “writing place” and make sure you write on a set schedule, because…“it’s a job too.”

    I’m not saying that these aren’t symptoms of other things, but every time I hear it, I think about the claims of how Jane Austin would write as and when she could.

    My own experience is that things like routine help, but I’ve also been stuck when I wasn’t quite sure was next…and I’d plow through all the advice of starting with anything and trying to make progress.

    But later, once I started to actually understand more about how the world worked from my studies of psychology, human behavior, and in particular, systems thinking, I realized that the problem wasn’t the schedule.

    The problem was that I didn’t know my characters—or their environment.

    Specifically, I didn’t really know much about what made them unique, interesting and different. Sure, I followed the advice.

    I gave them a backstory.

    I gave them motivations.

    I had strengths, flaws and quirks.

    They had their arcs. And I thought I “knew them inside out” like you were supposed to.

    But the thing I didn’t quite realize was I didn’t understand people. I didn’t understand *why* that backstory happened vs. other things.

    I didn’t understand why they were motivated to do something…

    …or when they’d do something that went *against* what they said they wanted.

    And most of the strengths, flaws and quirks were isolated and superficial.

    Because it’s true that you can’t predict what your characters will do in your story if you don’t understand both your characters and the environment they’re in.

    But you can’t really understand how those characters will *react* until you understand who they truly are—not just as a collection of characteristics and events…

    …but what that makes them think, believe and value.

    This is generally the stuff you’d find if you were talking to some friends at the pub after work—after a few drinks and a few sessions for sure.

    But only if you were paying attention to the “in between” bits that connected everything you knew about the character into a coherent whole of a real person.

    Because when it comes to writing scenes with your characters, most people don’t directly connect what they know about the characters to the actions they take.

    They assume they know…they do it by feel.

    And that’s exactly how characters sound flat…scenes feel hollow…and continuity drifts.

    That’s where the information in the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint becomes so valuable, because it helps keep you focused on how your characters as people respond in the situation.

    Not just in broad strokes—but in detail.

    And when you can do that? You’re not guessing anymore.

    You’re not “out of ideas.”

    And you’re no longer staring at a blinking cursor taunting you from the top left of an empty page.

    You just write the story your characters show you…

    …because you literally know your characters better than themselves…

    …and because you understand how what you know about them drives their decisions.

    That’s exactly what the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ going to help you discover. Grab your copy of the Blueprint here:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    And before you try to take another crack at that breakthrough scene…

    …make sure you make your characters at least buy the first round.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Cooking up a great story

    Most people who cook use a recipe at least part of the time, and the most valuable use of a recipe isn’t to “try something new.” It’s when you’re doing something you don’t do that often and you don’t want to forget anything.

    And that’s really how I believe the “recipes” of plot structures, beat sheets and stock characters should be used.

    But even following a recipe requires “knowing the basics” about how to perform each step, and a lot of the time when it comes to stories…

    …those “basics” aren’t as basic as they initially appear.

    The theory is that great stories all have certain structures, characters and arcs based on the type of story you want to tell.

    This is true, but the question you need to ask is simple:

    Do you want your story driven by the structure…

    …or do you want the structure to be a function of your story?

    Of course, it’s not really one or the other completely—just like following a recipe.

    But if the only thing you do is start with the recipe and then go to the store to buy the ingredients…

    …the thing is that by the time you realize you need a particular pan by Chapter 3 you didn’t know you needed because you didn’t really fully understand what following the recipe meant…

    …your progress will grind to a halt…

    …and so will your story.

    I don’t want that to happen to you, because I want you to understand what drives all great stories from the inside out vs. the inside in:

    The choices the characters make in a given situation based on what they know, the skills they have and the resources available to them.

    Because if you focus on making sure all *those* ingredients are in place…

    …then any scene in your story…

    …is going to basically write itself.

    Because the outcome of that scene are going to be coherent, credible and inevitable.

    That’s why I wrote the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint for you, so if you’re still struggling to break free of structure-based storytelling…

    …or you’re still stuck on your Breakthrough Scene…

    …then just grab your copy of the Blueprint using this link:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    Because your story needs to be in the world, not stuck because you don’t know what happens next.

    And the best way to get it unstuck…

    …is to set things in motion…

    …so the story tells itself.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Lack of accountability isn’t what’s holding you back

    One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear if you’re stuck on your story is that you need to get an accountability partner. In fact, there’s actually even a whole accountability group on Clubhouse that meets for an hour to write in silence!

    But here’s the thing they don’t tell you about being stuck with your story:

    Being stuck isn’t about not having someone to make sure you check in every day and prove you’re writing.

    Being stuck is about not having clarity about where your story is supposed to go.

    That’s it.

    Because without clarity, you’re trying to force things.

    You’re trying to follow a pre-set plot, and the action or the dialog feels flat.

    You’re trying to force a particular beat because that’s the next one the beat sheet says should happen.

    And you’re trying to think of something “interesting” that should happen…

    …while staring at the evil, blinking cursor at the top left of a blank page.

    We’ve all been there.

    But the difference between being stuck because you don’t know what to write and hours literally disappearing without you noticing because you’re so deep in flow that the words just won’t stop coming isn’t about accountability.

    It’s about clarity.

    You MUST have clarity about your story and where it’s supposed to go.

    But one of the most interesting things about writing is that getting clarity is often one of the hardest things to do.

    Why?

    Because we don’t really understand the easiest path to creating a great story.

    We think that we can start from the beginning, pick a plot, populate it with characters and sequence it to the right beats and everything will work out.

    But it doesn’t.

    Because following the plots and patterns doesn’t give us clarity.

    Understanding our story, our characters and the problems they must face to make the story come alive is what gives us the clarity we need.

    And when you have it?

    It unlocks everything.

    Unfortunately, getting that clarity often relies on luck or inspiration.

    Until now.

    Because now, with the Perpetual Story System™, you can get that clarity by default—as soon as you have an idea for either a character or an interesting situation that inspires you to tell a story.

    And the fastest way to do that is using the information in the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™, because it shows you what’s required for each breakthrough scene you’ll ever need to write.

    Get it here: https://storysys.me/blueprint

    Because your story deserves to be in the world.

    And I want to help you any way I can to make that happen.

    To unlocking the soul of your story,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™

  • Staring down the blinking cursor

    Most people think “writer’s block” is about them. But it isn’t. It’s about the story you’re trying to tell.

    There’s nothing more frustrating than being at the point in your story when the ideas dry up, because the next thing that happens is you end up taunted by your arch-nemesis, the blinking cursor at the top of an empty page.

    This is not a mechanical problem.

    This is a story problem.

    In particular, it’s probably that you’re trying to force your story into being…

    …rather than letting it tell you what happens next.

    This isn’t you.

    This is how you’ve been told you should write stories.

    And whether you’re a pantser or a planner, you’re still probably starting at the beginning and going to the end.

    But that’s exactly why you’re stuck:

    Too many variables.

    The better option is figure out exactly where you want things to be at the end of your scene, your story or even your multi-volume masterpiece…

    …and then work “backwards” to discover the story that makes that happen.

    The story that makes the ending inevitable.

    No more crazy plot twists.

    No more empty escalations.

    Just a story that makes sense, is consistent with itself…

    …and has a soul.

    Because when you do that?

    You’re never going to be stuck staring at a blinking cursor again.

    That’s exactly what the Perpetual Story System™ was designed to do: make great stories inevitable.

    And if you’re stuck staring at a blinking cursor on the top of an empty page and want to see what the Perpetual Story System might be able to do for you…

    …then just head on over and pick up your copy of the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ using this link:

    https://storysys.me/blueprint

    So you can break through your writer’s block for good…

    …and finally get your story into the world.

    To unlocking your story’s soul,

    ast
    —
    Andrew S. Townley
    Creator of the Perpetual Story System™