: Re: The psychology of starting a piece of writing I have a problem when it comes to writing (blog posts, stories and novels). It might just be me, but maybe other people have experienced it too?

@Nimeshi163

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I've been trying another approach recently.

I hit a brick wall with a story when I don't know what to write, I've been working on getting around that by trying to outline my story before I sit down. If I can't maintain focus through the outline then I won't be able to maintain it throughout the writing process!

First I try to scope the story. What am I looking for? A short story? A novel? Something in between?

What tempo do I want to set? 2000 word chapters? 8000 words?

My idea usually includes a character or two and a very broad story arc, so I start plotting these into the chapters.

I find a chapter structure helps me. I often have an opening scene (about 10% to 20% of the chapter's word count), a first and second part (about 30% to 40%) and then a closing scene. This helps me keep structure and tempo but if a particular chapter needs to break the rules - that's ok!

For each scene I create three bullet points. These are:

What's going on.
What the conflict is (this can be something as trivial as the character burning themselves on a kettle through to a fatality).
What each character wants during the scene (as the phrase goes - even if it's only a glass of water).

If I don't know these three things before I start the scene I don't write it. This also means that when I do write a scene (anything from about 200-2000 words) I already have the tools I need and the writing is much, much easier.

TLDR:

If you know what you're going to write before you start, you can put your effort into the words than the ideas.

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