Breakthroughs

So there was this picture of the Hulk punching through a wall I was going to use, but people are getting all crazy about copyright and whatnot lately, so I decided against.  Imagine it here.


As my mom pointed out to me the other day, my word count ticker has made zero progress lately.  Thanks in part to that one sentence (it doesn't take too much to motivate me, I guess) I have sort of buckled down the past few days and started working on this project.  Why is my word count ticker not moving, you ask?

It had to do with that wall.  I realized that my head was not the best thing to hit it with, so instead of going straight at it and writing from nothing, I went back and did some brainstorming.  Brainstorms are great.  In fact, there isn't anything better for knocking down nasty blank walls.

I got stuck when someone had to go somewhere, because I couldn't visualize it.  So I spent a day (yes, multiple hours) drawing a map.  Why did it take me so long?  Because I'm crazy and wanted it to be believable, so I built that thing from the tectonic plates up.  Not kidding.  I stared at some maps of real tectonic plates.  Then some maps of rivers.  Then I had to figure out the scale and what kind of population was believable.

Yeah.  Research.

Also, I am an idea thief.  Today I was watching Tangled with the girls, and there was one scene where I thought, "How would the movie have gone if this one certain scene had ended a different way?  Too bad I can't write that because I can't use these characters... wait!  That thing that I was thinking totally fits my characters!"  It was a lightbulb moment.  My story now has a place to go.  Tangled isn't the only thing I've stolen ideas from and tweaked, either, I admit.  But I hope I've done a good enough job of making these things my own that you won't see how unoriginal I really am.

And I found something cool that has been so great for generating ideas that maybe other writers may want to try it.  It's simple: make a list of your characters and their goals.  It gives you a really clear view of where you can build conflict, which is helpful to me because I'm bad at plots.  It also helped me to better know my characters.  This plus my stolen and twisted ideas have totally busted through my first wall.  Hopefully now that I've laid some more groundwork you'll see my word count going up soon!

My wall-breaking tools: research, idea thievery, and lists.

Now I am hungry and full of ideas, so I'm going to eat and write.