How do you beat Writer's Block?

[Professor Cyndi Kingsley]

Based on a conversation in spam earlier today, I figured I'd get this topic started so we can share ideas.

What works to get you out of that funk, the one we've all experienced at one point or another, our greatest foe, ruiner of RPs- Writer's block?

Tell us your tried and true methods, and we'll be able to keep a directory of sorts for all of use to peruse when it inevitably hits us!

 

[Merrill Piper]

Maybe not the best advice, but I have a drink, or two.
It lets me loosen up, and not worry so much about what I'm writing so I can focus on just getting it down on the page.

 

[November Albertson]

So I had said this in spam but I'll say it here again

Title: Dealing with those "Annoying" Class Replies

Problem: No motivation to reply to classes, find them boring, useless to your character other than the fact you need the good grades if you want them to have an important job in the future,

My Solution: (I first try to not leave them to the end of semester, but this will apply even if you do because of rl/no muse/etc.)

Think of your classes as an extension to your current plots with your characters. Obviously you might have semesters where your character is only in one plot or none. But the goal is to have plots with your character throughout the semester to build them up as a character. So imagine this, November and Amber had a plot where distaste for each other grew, that week in classes November tried to avoid sitting near Amber. Having the idea that November was going to be upset during classes that week got me through the lessons, cause I could put that in her post. So if having to catch up with lessons at the end of the semester try to remember what weeks things happened with your character so you can add that stuff into your lesson background. For the first few years with interactive lessons, read what other people are doing in their posts and have your character see it and respond with shock/awe/laughter before proceeding to try out the thing themselves.
​

 

[Wren Louise]

Q U I C K F I R I N G​

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<FONT font="Times New Roman">I and other friends on HNZ have been doing this for years, now. Quickfiring can be done on any platform, but it usually works best over some form of instant messaging, when you're doing it with other people. The point is to slam out a scenario at your own pace, and it can come in many different forms, from dialogue-only, short sentences to OSW-style rps. It can be written in first or third person, and the point is to just let your character respond in the moment.

Say you have a scenario occur, like someone is giving birth and the father of the child is present. Sometimes the best reaction a character has in that moment is just dialogue- in a standard roleplay, you'd need to fill some of the space with thoughts or other actions. Quickfiring just cuts out the middleman and lets your character respond instantly, just like they would in real life.

Quickfiring is the fastest way to get muse that I know of. It lets me step into the shoes of any character in an instant and think only about how they would react instinctively. Sometimes a qf can precede an on board roleplay or follow along after it, letting you explore the after-effects of whatever occurred without the pressure of presentation.

Here's some examples of different ways to quickfire:
​

Kelsey Ruth: I just have this image of Robin being bored, so he starts using Alessio's head for target practice
Kelsey Ruth: -thwack, thwack, thwack-
Kelsey Ruth: Robin: "But it's the best, and biggest, moving target I have!"
Tenile: Aless: "Robin, you throw one of those things at me again, and I will vanish all of them, and if I ever see another, instant vanish. I don't care of the situation."
Kelsey Ruth: Robin: "I'll juggle fruit."
Kelsey Ruth: "Knives and forks. Salt and pepper shakers. Crayons. Fluffy handcuffs. Oooo ..."
Tenile: Aless: "Fine then. But if you start throwing those at me, I will petrify you and stick you outside so pigeons can poop on you."
Kelsey Ruth: Robin: "Like your sheets?" -smirks-
Tenile: Aless: "Robin, did you go and create that zip-line into the office window out of sheets again?"
Kelsey Ruth: Robin: "I! ... Um ... Didn't ... not ... do it?"
Tenile: Aless: -frowns- "I'm living with a 5'11 fanciullo*."­
Tenile: *child

Artemis and Kellin had decided to skip the middle man and go straight to Hogwarts to visit Kellin's father. They'd only met a few times since they'd begun dating, much to Art's disappointment, as she found him the loveliest peach and a great snuggler. She wanted to show Kellin around her old school, and as they walked up the corridors holding hands, they got a few amused looks and some ill-muffled "Aww's" that neither of them noticed. Art still remember her old school schedule, and she was counting on Arvo not wanting to walk down all those stairs three times a day for lunch, so she knocked on his office door with some confidence.

Artemis was quite right. The Arithmancy professor was in his office having some tea with a cupcake that had just finished its dance. He had sent a congratulatory letter to his son about the birth of his first child, though he planned on visiting the couple to have a good look at his new grandchild, but with the year being quite busy, he just hadn't had the time to do so. A knock on the door made him look up from some papers, and a hearty hello called for the visitors (whom he assumed to be students) to come on in. He was in a marvellous mood.

"Papa!" cried Artemis in greeting, holding up the baby Lion-King style. Her own father was Dada, but Arvo had soon acquired his own affectionate moniker. "Surprise!"

Arvo immediately acknowledge the little bundle that, to those of a more normal size, would have been tiny. But to the three of them, he was rather perfect. In a moment of rare dexterity, Arvo hopped out of the chair and rushed over to properly meet his new grandson. "Oh, look at those rosy cheeks! He's beautiful."

There are other examples of what you can do with quickfires other than read back on them for inspiration. For example, I posted this quickfire with Leopold Cohen and Mikael Ramsey into Fanfictions after I edited it into readability. It's fun for other people to read as well as the participants.

Another example of what can be done with quickfires is compiling them into fully fledged roleplays to make them canon. Sometimes you don't have the energy to do all that writing at once, but you still have the muse for short bursts. This roleplay, featuring Calcifur Giordano and Sladen Stark, is an example of combining several qfs and writing them up into canon posts. The 'hard part' of the content was done earlier, so posting the results is just a matter of linking the little posts together. It's almost like writing a report (in a good way), where you have all your notes already and you can just smash out the less important bits to make it all coherent.​

A U s​

Because quickfires aren't always canon, there's another way to use them to spark muse- AUs, or 'Alternate Universes'. Anyone who has read any fanfiction ever knows what this is about- putting your characters in fantastic scenarios, in different genders, new demographics, different ages, different periods of history, etc, gives you an amazing opportunity to see how your character would react to stimuli that they would never otherwise encounter. This kills two birds with one stone- gives you muse for the characters you're using, and also sparks incredible character development, as you gain a deeper understand of how your character views the world.

Best yet, the internet's full of sources for potential AUs to explore, since this isn't a new concept. Check out this tumblr AU post:

Imagine putting your relationship, friendship and family pairings into situations like this. Yeah, it's cheesy as all get out, but it's hella fun, which is why it's a thing ​

 

[Samuel Phillips]

Maybe not the best advice, but I have a drink, or two.
It lets me loosen up, and not worry so much about what I'm writing so I can focus on just getting it down on the page.

This! A chilled drink or two can help to relax you enough to just write and sometimes the action of writing for the sake of it can help!

One thing I tend to do is make playlists with songs that remind me of characters/their situations (The playlists I do have are a mess on my phone rather than anywhere I can share them) and listening to said playlists while going on a walk to get out of my head, or on the way to uni in the morning can help me by the time I get home and actually sit down and attempt to write.

Something else that has helped me immensely in the last few years is a wee program called Zenwriter. It's a place with calming music, backgrounds etc, that takes up your whole computer screen and sort of blocks out the world so you have no choice but to immerse yourself in the writing! It can tell you the time and your word count and stuff so you don't get too lost, also. A few downsides are that it doesn't have spellcheck, and it is a paid for program. But it does have a free trial so if anyone is interested they can see what it is like

I don't mean to like advertise it and stuff, sorry if it comes across that way (there are a bunch of other ways to block out the world and write!!)! But it is definitely something that helps me focus on the act of writing rather than becoming distracted (there are again, a bunch of other ways to avoid being distracted of course!), but I thought it was really worth mentioning! I find that being able to have a distraction while in a case of writer's block can make it a million times more difficult to actually begin to write and get over the problem, and a program that kind of blocks out the distractions for me really helps!

 

[Danielle Gates]

I use my RL mood as my IC mood while trying to mix it with the lesson. Like if I have a headache now, my students have headache.

 

[November Albertson]

Something else that has helped me immensely in the last few years is a wee program called Zenwriter.

Yes! This. Annaleise suggested this to me just over a week ago and I started the 14 day trail that night. I've used it nearly every day since for writing. The first post I did on it was super long and in depth that I haven't done in a while and every time I use it for a post, they come out better than I think they would have just using Microsoft word like I use in the past for classes and keeping track of how my character is liking the class (this is another suggestion I'll continue below actually). But Zenwriter is really nice and I'm considering buying the full edition to it when the trail runs out. I'm currently editing a chapter of a fanfic I first wrote in 2010 and I've already doubled the reading length, cause it tells you the reading length and other facts about your document if you want. No spellcheck, but just pasting on browser and quickly running through hasn't bothered me to look for words I got wrong, also gives that extra double read-through I would normally skip.


Another class suggestion is to keep all the posts for one class in a document separate from the site. I find it helps me to keep track of how my characters feel about the class, cause I can't imagine how many times I've said November hates Transfiguration one week and the next week she loves it, as an example. So I started just writing my replies for each class in their own documents with just my character's reply.
​

 

[Stefan Archer]

Maybe not the best advice, but I have a drink, or two.
It lets me loosen up, and not worry so much about what I'm writing so I can focus on just getting it down on the page.

Yeah, this is my method too
Sometimes, I'll just have a drink or three with dinner and i'll come back much looser and more relax, stick on a good playlist and boom, writer's block gone.


Although another method I use when it's persistent writers block is to go do something else for a couple of hours. Even like a day, just take a break let your mind think of something else, and usually I can come back with more energy to do the replies I need, or I go out with friends get really drunk and the only thing I can do the next day is sit on my laptop and reply to thing.

 

[Alexis Kramer]

Maybe not the best advice, but I have a drink, or two.
It lets me loosen up, and not worry so much about what I'm writing so I can focus on just getting it down on the page.

Yeah, this is my method too
Sometimes, I'll just have a drink or three with dinner and i'll come back much looser and more relax, stick on a good playlist and boom, writer's block gone.


Although another method I use when it's persistent writers block is to go do something else for a couple of hours. Even like a day, just take a break let your mind think of something else, and usually I can come back with more energy to do the replies I need, or I go out with friends get really drunk and the only thing I can do the next day is sit on my laptop and reply to thing.

I would love to have a drink or two to loosen up the muse. Given that I am HNZing properly when I am at work, drinking is out of the question. So I just stick to a playlist, usually Top Billboard and Spotify, and get going with the posts.

Another is when I multitask with a much more important task to do.

 

[Amber Chou Wilson]

I find switching things up helps me a lot! So alternating lessons and roleplays or switching between characters between replies.

I also tend to remind myself that this is a roleplaying site, so the focus of the writing is on the interaction with others. I mean that I try not to be too hard on myself for writing beautiful prose or perfect dialogue if that stops me from writing a reply in a timely manner. If that makes sense I tend to think 'will this person mind if it's not perfect if it moves the rp forward?' and then I tend to be like 'probably not!' (though I can only hope that's true)

Obviously I'm not saying you should rush replies, but we can all be our own worst critics. We see mistakes and faults others wouldn't, so I try very hard not to worry about that too much.

 

[Daisy Parker-Taylor]

If I really don't feel like writing, I don't push it. I definitely have to remind myself that I don't get paid to do this, I'm doing it for fun! And then, after a bit of a break, I find it easier and more exciting to reply. I often listen to classical music as well, if I listen to music on my playlist, then I just end up singing along and not focusing.
If I want to beef up my paragraph a little bit, I try to think of all the senses I can include (working at a Primary School taught me this one ) I did all five senses in one post, and it was quite difficult, but definitely juiced it up. Now I just choose one or two to add in though my favorite one is 'feel' - the way the grass feels on their feet or the material of their clothes feel on their skin.

 

[Aurora Night]

I sort of have two things that I try to do - one more pertaining to my own writer's block, and one that I use to try and keep it away from others I'm rping with.

writer's block
Sometimes I find myself staring at a reply and I just think, 'I don't know how to start writing this.' But then my eyes drift further through the previous post, and I find something that I immediately know what my character's response will be, for example in one of my recent threads:

"Oh, hello! Are you one of Tristan's friends?" She directed a sunny smile at the strange boy. "He's never mentioned you."

I'm ashamed to say that this brutality came to me immediately - but it appears three quarters of the way through the reply. So I just put an 'X' before it to indicate that there was stuff happening before that, and worked forwards from there. And then once that had reached a natural conclusion, I worked backwards. Why did my character say that? The new person in the thread wasn't even talking to her, so why did she feel it necessary to respond? By following that seed of something I knew would happen further along in my post, I was able to build up the reply around it, rather than try and wrack my brain for how to begin at the start and write chronologically.

inspiring replies
I hate writing flat replies because not only do I beat myself up about them, but I also feel like I've let the other writer down by giving them nothing fun to respond to. I suppose it's more apparent in my Gryffindors, but one thing I love to do is write actions. I've noticed sometimes in paragraph-based roleplaying it can't so much be called 'talking heads,' but rather, 'thinking heads.' We get so into what our characters are thinking and feeling, and that's great, but sometimes I write a reply and I notice that my character has slipped away into being something like a statue that can only move their head and hands every so often while the mental processes churn away around them. Writing this way puts a lot of pressure on making my dialogue interesting, and sometimes that's just not always possible. So I always try to have my characters doing something throughout the thread, whether it be as simple as kicking the table leg rhythmically, or as large as inviting other characters along within them into new action, in order to give the post more realism and points of response. There's a time and a place (and personalities) for sitting/standing around and just trading dialogue back and forth, but whenever it makes sense to do so I like to liven the scene up and make it come alive - making it fun for myself, and hopefully fun for the other person to reply to.