Do you suffer from Writerus Blockitis?

[IronParrot]

After several attempts and rewrites over the past three years, my full-length novel is still on the fourteenth page.

Anyone else having a similar problem? Of course. Now fess up. :)

[Gwaimir Windgem]

You bet I do! :eek: The furthest I ever got was like fifty pages. And that one was just total crap. I wrote like 40-some pages of another, also total crap. Another one was slightly better written, and I think was up to like page 30-some. Then there's the one I've been working on most recently, which is I think like 20 pages. And finally, we have the one I plan on doing which doesn't have anything at all. :p

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by IronParrot
After several attempts and rewrites over the past three years, my full-length novel is still on the fourteenth page.

Anyone else having a similar problem? Of course. Now fess up. :)
After about three years of working on it, my full length novel is currently about 420 or so pages long :p. I have had writer's block before, in the past, and I probably will have it again sometimes. My plots are so structured nowadays that there's not much room for it, though, so it's very rare now that I get a writer's block.

My earlier books or stories that I wrote were really, really pathetic. But I was inspired as I wrote them, and even though my writing might sometimes be bad, at least I'm willing to keep with it. And if you keep with your writing, then you keep improving. Practice and reading are the two keys (To good writing; they don't have much to do with writer's block, in my opinion). You can't be too critical of your writing; it's better to let others be critical of it for you. You can constantly improve it and recognize when it's not good, but if you just wait till it's as good as the pros, who failed and failed and failed before getting anywhere, then it's not likely that you will get far in your book.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Uch, I'm not very good at making structured plots. I have a BASIC idea, and it usually gets further than that, but not really structured.

[Elenka]

My "structured plot" gets altered so much in the making that it simply collapses after the initial chapter. So much for structured plots.

Yes, I get writer's block. A lot. But I survive. I just find a handy book, read a bit, find a phrase to write a book around and write the first eight or so pages. :D

[Lief Erikson]

Oh! :( Structuring the plots is one of the funnest parts of story writing!

I start with just the semblence of an idea. Just ideas that come from various places; sometimes from my imagination suddenly. We all have experienced that.

Those I finally collect into the very basic story outline. That outline undergoes major transformation and shifts as I think of better things; I'm utterly merciless with my basic plots. I write and struggle and delete and rewrite and consider until I finally come up with a coherent plot. Then I throw that plot out and start over, because it's not good enough.

But at other times, the inspiration is there and it just explodes forth. It's probably not necessary to be so picky about your story plotline as I am about mine, but my book is really huge (as you know)and will be much longer. So I've had loads of time to think about what I'm going to do next, and because my book is so long and I know that whatever comes next is going to also be huge, I'm naturally very picky about what I'm going to be spending the next few years writing :D.

Anyhow, after your basic plot is though up, and they don't have to be nearly that complicated, then you have everything pretty well linked up. You know what becomes of characters and where they end up. You know what the plot is of the story and what happens.

The scene by scene plot comes after that, in which you identify what happens within each scene of the book. Here's a small excerpt of the scene by scene plot to a plot I threw out some time ago:

From the scene by scene plot to The War of Darkness
The enemy defeat the good army at the bridge because of the behind attack, and the enemy close in on Delener, the wizard council.
Morciis musters his Sorocs and journeys to Elerev himself to oversee the destruction of Delener.
Calian watches the events taking place in Erinosad from the magical kingdom. The people of magical land are saddened when they hear of the terrible destruction.
Morciis destroys the Point of Light, leveling the entire mountain. He continues to Delener.
The forces of evil attack again and again, and finally break through the gates. The Tiger Force fights to the end, and most of its troops are eradicated. Aenra survives with several others. Delener is destroyed and the wizards all perish. Junsin himself is killed by Morciis. Tirdin rejoins the evil ones, and is brought to Erena.
The survivors of the Tiger Force flee to the Jag.

So, it's just taking under a microscope what's going to happen. You don't have to choose conversations, and things do often come up that you haven't anticipated. Often those lead to further plot developments, and those can be really fun to think about and add in or delete. But having a structured plot is very, very important, for with it you can see where you are and where you're going. Scene by scene ones tend to reveal difficulties you hadn't anticipated, and during the plot writing most difficulties that could become writer's blocks are overcome.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by Elenka
My "structured plot" gets altered so much in the making that it simply collapses after the initial chapter. So much for structured plots.

Yes, I get writer's block. A lot. But I survive. I just find a handy book, read a bit, find a phrase to write a book around and write the first eight or so pages. :D
Oh yes, definitely plots get alterred a lot in the beginning. They get alterred a whole, whole lot. And you delete things you don't like and change things- if you simply can't think of things, then you wait until you can. The plot gets messed with a huge amount, but that is supposed to make it stronger, not weaker. For me, it does. The weak plot collapses and falls apart and the stronger plot endures the test. If it can't endure the test, then is it likely to be any easier in writing?

[Ninquelote]

I just got over a three-month bout of it. :D

My style of writing is very hard on me, I pressure myself into using alot of description and nearly no action. So I pick something that happens in that particular chapter, and mould all the description leaning towards that particular something.

I have yet to do it with multiple somethings.

[Ninquelote]

But I'm always, always stuck for names, which throws me into (at most) a weeklong writer's block.

[Lief Erikson]

Well, with names I cannot really help you, because I don't know why they're so easy for me. I'll take a crack at it.

Names with e and i are generally more gentle. For names that are meant to be a strong, solid character I often have a Th or an Ar in the earlier parts of the name. Having a "non" at the end or a "rar" often have some good characters attached. "en", mixtures of things with the "e" in them tend to be more gentle and nice of names. Harsh sounds tend to be more abrupt, using g, r, k, more guttural sounds sometimes, or sounds that are hard and abrupt.

But those are some general things, only. My names generally just mold themselves to the character I create. The name sounds "in character" for the individual, so I use that name.


Your way of using description is very, very different from how I write. It sounds very good for practice on description, but it sounds impractical to me for most writing situations. If you want to keep the reader's interest for an extended period of time, anyway.

From what I've read, your description is really beautiful. You're doing precisely as you mean to, and you're doing it well. But make more actions, more dialogue, just more things happening, and I'll be able to enjoy it all more easily. Rather than catching myself reading only a few words in a paragraph sometimes.

Your descriptive practice is really wonderful and it'll be great; your skill with that is probably a lot greater than mine at the present. But make things move a bit quicker, please :).

[Ninquelote]

I'll take that into account.... However, for the first few chapters, it's just really character intoduction. Each chapter shows a small bit of the character each time. Perhaps I should just group them all together into one big chapter.

Don't worry, around the second to next chapter, something quick-paced will happen. I'm just not hasty. :D Like a few other good trees I know.

[IronParrot]

Plot structure is not as much of a problem for me as procrastination... I have a plot together, just not on a very precise point-by-point, action-by-action basis. It's those details - and their sequencing - that trips me up.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Yeah, what he said. :p

[Lief Erikson]

Procrastination is solved by incentive. I don't allow myself onto Entmoot during weekdays until I've written two pages into my novel. There's my motivation :D.

[Coney]

Hmm, a few things will cause the old brain to seize....

Romance in fantasy stories: I struggle with this a lot (I have a chapter that has gone through it's seventh re-write).........The romance scenes either turn far too mushy or they become too shallow :/ ........ I think one of my major problems is that I've not read enough believable fantasy-romance (btw, I think the only way a guy can write believable romance is to have his work proof-read by a woman, our idea of fantasy-romance and thiers can be very different.) I think Romance should have a thread all to itself in this forum :D.

Travel: Or more specifically, the timescale thereof....... I usually mess this up, mostly because I hate sitting down working it out (as one of my friends once pointed out, "ok, 130 miles, in four days, on horseback, is possible but not in the middle of a forest!")....ho hum :D

Shave, shower and shishkebab: (or probably better titled "let 'em rest and bathe).......this is something (s) I usually forget to describe :/

Currency: AAAGGRRHH Gold crowns, silver pieces and copper plebs.........How many times have I used these??..........inventing new currency is tricky..........introducing how it works into the storyline, even more difficult.

Politics: Another little hurdle........I'm constantly trying to come up with new political systems for my fantasy work.......I can't write another that is based around a monarchy or autocracy......I've read a thousand of 'em.

Well, those a the things that will slam the door on my creativity, once the writers blockage has affected my pipes I just put the manuscript into the cabinet and go work on something else, I'm not the kind of person who can sit and stare at a blank page.........with me inspiration is a fickle beast, it'll only arrive when it wants to.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Is there religion in your world? If so, Theocracy might work. I read an interesting article about how the ancient Druids basically controlled their entire society.

[Coney]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem
Is there religion in your world? If so, Theocracy might work. I read an interesting article about how the ancient Druids basically controlled their entire society.

Coincidentally enough, my own version of a Theocracy is what I've used in one of my stories :)

Creating new religions is one of the things I enjoy most about world-building :) (plus having a character be religious or not can really help shape his/her personality).

[Lief Erikson]

Many of those different things deserve topics to themselves :D. I'd love to discuss most of them :).

Currency I have largely ignored up to this point in my book. Only on two or three occasions did I bother with using any money or discussing it. I'll be changing that some other book down the line :).

Travel can be a pain. I am not very organized in working out my distances, and what modes of transportation have what speeds. There I tend to just ignore the difficulty also though.

Time can be a bit of a hurdle for me. I notice that's something you didn't mention, but occasionally I mix things up. Someone who really likes my book sometime down the line will probably look at it closely and see . . . "Hey! That journey took two weeks for this person and a month for this other!"

Politics and romance I enjoy writing :). Politics I absolutely love getting into, up to my throat and over. My book is full of them, every aspect and from every perspective. Including the costs on economy, though without getting into exact amounts of money.

Romance I think I've been doing fine with so far, primarily by simply letting feelings between people grow over time and through journeys or shared experiences. But in my novel thus far, I've not really focused very hard on a romantic aspect, so I might have trouble with that and simply not know it.

I'd like to see new threads on some of these different things :). Writer's block isn't the best thread to contain many of them.

[Coney]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
I'd like to see new threads on some of these different things :). Writer's block isn't the best thread to contain many of them.

Agreed, Lief (and others of course) please feel free to start them:)

I would start them myself............but time won't allow (next essay starts tommorrow). I'll certainly read them with interest :)

[Elvellyn]

I get writers block all the time. It is so annoying. I can never get very far in a story because I either a) run out of good ideas b) forget all of the good ideas I had or C) give up.
I have trouble coming up with names. Usually I try to develop their character before i give them a name, but before I get a chance to do that I get buried under all other aspects of te story and the whole plot just collapses.:( That would be about the time I give up.

[sun-star]

Writer's block is the bane of my life. I have the plot, the characters and what I want to say about them, and I sit in front of the computer and can't work out how to say it. Then I feel like a failure :(. Somehow I only write freely when I have other things I'm supposed to be doing...

I feel lucky that I don't have all your problems with names. I'm not a fantasy writer, so my main characters are currently called Alice, Jonathan, Claire... It's much easier that way (though I did stretch a point and call one character Dorian, in a weak moment :D )

[Aralyn]

A cup of coffee usually cures writer's block for me. Or people watching. I get stopped in the middle of stories when I'm not sure how to end it but I don't stop writing. I write a poem or a descrip of something or thought writing to get myself thinking so I don't think I really get Writer's Block that often (but I still like the coffee)

[Earniel]

I don't think I've actually experienced a writer's block before but then again I'm probably not writing long enough to have one. I'm sure it'll come up when I write bigger parts and for a longer time.

What I do have from time to time is plot blocks, when you realised something is screwed up in your plot and to remove the error is to remove a part that you really want in it. In this stage writing is not involved yet. Having to figure out a way around the problem without removing the parts that you like, tends to happen annoyingly often with me.

So far I've always found a way around it. But it happens often that I simply let that part of the story be for a while and think out another episode of the story or simply another story. When I return to the first problem, sometimes after months, a solution tends to come more quickly.

[Lalaith]

No, I didn't really have Writerus blockitis, but I suffered from being stuck in the story. You know you have different parts of a story and if one part is told to it's end, you have to think of a new one. That was rather difficult for me. I had no problems when I found a new storyline, but without ... uh, can't think of it.
I hope you understand what I mean.

[Elvellyn]

We had a substitute teacher in Agriculture class today, so I figured it would be a good time to work on my story. SoI sat there and the whole period the only words that would come to my head were "Mim the Petty-dwarf". Of course once I got to softball practice, I had plenty of ideas.:rolleyes:
Writerus Blockitis is cured at the most annoying times.

[Coney]

Originally posted by Elvellyn
Writerus Blockitis is cured at the most annoying times.

Ain't that the truth :rolleyes:

I've kept a notepad in my bedside cabinet for years..........inspiration has an annoying habbit of hitting just as I'm drifting off to seep.

I once had a great idea for a story while I was at the dentist......couldn't remember it after the tooth butcher had finished working on me.........but I know it was a great idea :)

[Laurelyn]

I suffer constantly from that dreaded disease! I stare blankly at my paper/screen and say, what next? Then after a while I find some way to put off working on it. Which is what I'm doing now . . . . :D

[elvendrummer87]

omg, sometimes i think i have perpetual writers block! I'll start writing, and i'll get to page 5, and i won't know what to put next! i like to think of it as stop drop and roll: you stop writing from lack of ideas,
you drop the story, and procrastinate as long as possible until you get an idea,
and then when you know what to put next, you read what you've qritten so far and end up rolling on the floor laughing at the stupidity of what you wrote before! :D

[Kalile]

Yeah, I see what you mean. I started a novel when I was eleven, I think, and worked on it for months, got to twenty pages, and couldn't get back to it. Still, every time I look at it, I get no writing done because it sounds so juvinile I change everything. :rolleyes:
To those who have trouble with names:
a.String together letters until one sounds right. It usually works. b.Make nature names like Wintersky or Snowfire.
c.Find a cool name in a book and use it, or change a few letters
d. Be liberal with apostrophes. They add new pronunciation to a name. ex. Darian ---- Dar'ian
Tobias----Tob'ias or T'obias

[Aralyn]

Originally posted by Kalile
Yeah, I see what you mean. I started a novel when I was eleven, I think, and worked on it for months, got to twenty pages, and couldn't get back to it. Still, every time I look at it, I get no writing done because it sounds so juvinile I change everything. :rolleyes:

Yeah I do that. By the time I go back to proofread it I've changed the story completely

[Kalile]

It's a real pain. :( sigh.

[Ninquelote]

Originally posted by Kalile
To those who have trouble with names:
a.String together letters until one sounds right. It usually works. b.Make nature names like Wintersky or Snowfire.
c.Find a cool name in a book and use it, or change a few letters
d. Be liberal with apostrophes. They add new pronunciation to a name. ex. Darian ---- Dar'ian
Tobias----Tob'ias or T'obias

Names made like that all sound really silly, like the creator cheated on making names or something... I mean, if the names have to carry a certain theme, then nothing you've stated works.

[Indril Anarion]

There are times when I just get the biggest block a writer has ever faced...to get me back in the mood, I listen to music, go outside, read a book with the same genre as the book I'm writing, or just take a break...inspiration strikes in the wierdest moments...

Like right now, I am beginning my fourth book in a series of 5. I've been working on this project for like 2 years already, you'd think I'd be finished by now, especially since the books are too short for a novel, yet too long for a short story...

Oh, well, that's the life of a writer/student:rolleyes:

[Kalile]

Originally posted by Ninquelote
Names made like that all sound really silly, like the creator cheated on making names or something... I mean, if the names have to carry a certain theme, then nothing you've stated works.
Well, themes can be a problem, but if your setting is a fantasy world then it's great. My username came from Kalilae, but I took the "a" out, and I have an entirely different name. :D

Really, the name Tom started as someone stringing sounds together. Sometimes the best names come that way. I think the name Janera, for example, is lovely, and I made it up two seconds ago.
And the nature names actually come directly from a series of Mercades Lackey books.

These may not work for you, but they've yet to fail me. :)

[IronParrot]

"a.String together letters until one sounds right. It usually works. b.Make nature names like Wintersky or Snowfire.
c.Find a cool name in a book and use it, or change a few letters
d. Be liberal with apostrophes. They add new pronunciation to a name. ex. Darian ---- Dar'ian
Tobias----Tob'ias or T'obias"
The first three aren't bad points of advice, but as a reader - please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don't start with the apostrophes. :p

[Kalile]

Ok then, scratch that last. At least there weren't two and three apostrophes - I've seen that. :( Ouch!

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I personally don't think the apostrophes are that bad. I've used them on ocassion, to try and get across the correct pronunciation.

[Kalile]

Well, I like Dar'ian, but some people do get a little weird. A while back, I knew a girl named E'leshia who would yell at whoever didn't pronounce it right. :rolleyes:

Moderation in apostrophes!

[Lief Erikson]

I don't think it's bad either. I used the name Drarian once for a character in an RPG. Apostrophes aren't that bad either, though I don't use them at all often. The only character I can think of in my book who has an apostrophe in his name is It'Madiv.

But I do always try to fit the name to the personality, so that makes finding my names a little more complicated than your finding yours, Kalile. Though the process is basically the same- stringing together cool letters, and such :).

[Gwaimir Windgem]

That's pretty much what I do, though for some in my stories I use a form of rudimentary language (no doubt even more boring than my pantheon stuff :p), and in Tolkien I always do my best to make sure that my names fit in well with him.

[Ninquelote]

Ach, my setting is fantasy, and thus I try to keep a certain theme within the names among certain groups of people.

[Kalile]

Well, back to writerus blockirus.

I finally got going on a story that I really think I can finish, and I lost my notebook at school... :o Waaaah!!!! :( Still looking, and thank you to this forum and thread. I really do think I can finish it now. :)

[frodosgirlfriend]

*sob* My story I’ve been working on for a year (40 pages) and it's been going so well! I want to write it, there a part i really want to get to and I know once I do I'll have no trouble writing at all. I plane out my story before I write it and I’m between two major parts and i can't think of anything to put in between!

[IronParrot]

I haven't worked on my novel in three weeks. This, my friends, is what video game addiction does to you.

[Earniel]

That's not suffering from Writerus Blockitis, that's a serious case of Videogamitis. But I know from experience that's just as bad. :eek: :D

[The Ben]

Originally posted by IronParrot
After several attempts and rewrites over the past three years, my full-length novel is still on the fourteenth page.

Anyone else having a similar problem? Of course. Now fess up. :)

You bet I do. I ... oh darn it. What should I write? lets see... lets see...

[Lotesse]

c.Find a cool name in a book and use it, or change a few letters


This is a good idea. I bought a "baby names" book to reference when needing to come up with a suitably descriptive name for a particular character. Every name means something, contrary to what Butch says in Pulp Fiction... ('I'm an American, our names don't mean sh**') Even if a name doesn't mean something per sey, it can SOUND like what your character's key distinguishing characteristics are. For instance, in my RPG, a fellow mooter came up with the brilliant name of Saphtan to give to a guy, and his name really says so much. It sounds like who he is.

[Bombadillo]

Ooo, writer's block. I think that this hits people hard mainly because of their writing style. Lief of Ninquolete, if someone had a writing style similar to yours (close attention to detail, compulsion to make each scene complete before moving on) except less structured, they make it harder on themselves. Whereas styles like Joseph Conrad's in Heart of Darkness, in which the speaker actually says he's not trying to tell each and every event of his story but just to convey the feelings that each conveyed to him, and therefore reads like a dream, just flow right out of the writer's mind. Of course that sort of style isn't appropriate for all stories, but it is certainly easier to contuniously write.

Also, if you're like me, you find prewriting and plot outlines and such too frustrating to be worthwhile. Often, if I'm outlining the story, I'll get so carried away with a specific detail of it that I'll write about 50 lines on it under just one bullet point, and then if I try to add all that actually into the story, it doesn't flow smoothly. IOW, I always wind up wasting my time. I think that actually discussing your idea for a plot with someone beforehand is immeasurably better. The only hard part there is finding someone who would appreciate your idea and really be able to help you with it, but once the two of you start talking, ideas just lead to new ideas, including motifs, themes, character dynamics, relationships, twists, ect. And you sort through your plot "in realtime" so to speak, and it's fun to boot, carrying on with a person like that.

EDIT: Lotesse, I think about that sometimes. What my name says about me is that I've killed or cheated my way to the crown. (That's my first and last name together.) That's a cool enough title to mention, but it's ridiculous how much it doesn't suit me.

[Elanor]

Badly. I learned long ago that I'm not a creative writer, as much as I would like to be. The only thing I can write is parodies, or essays. Or limericks expressing my frustration with the same:

So many ideas I've got!
I've often constructed a plot,
But as soon as I write,
Then it's gone, out of sight!
I can't write as fast as I thought.

Double meaning on "thought" there. I have written a bit of fanfiction, but it has to be short. I just don't have the patience to map out detailed plots and mix dialogue with description.

Hey, IronParrot is in this thread. Where did he go?

[Bombadillo]

Hey, good limerick though! :D Really.

I think IP is still lurking around here sometimes, but most of his posts are movie reviews in the entertainment forum now.

[Curubethion]

To get unstuck, you might want to consider throwing in a dilemma of minor to grand scale. Possibly tie it into the plot...

Or, if you're getting hung up on a scene, write its conclusion as is, and go on. You can edit later.

[Lady Marion Magdalena]

Name dictionaries are good investments. I recommend getting one that gives lots of lingual and cultural variations of names. For example, I liked the meaning of the name Alvin, but due to chipmunck associations there was no way I was going to stick my male lead with that name. The old english spelling though is Alwyn, which sounds and looks much better and fits the character perfectly.
If you don't feel like buying one there are plenty of free name dictionaries online, and they often have a bunch of obscure and interesting names that you wouldn't find elsewhere, as well as the old standards. :)

Now, I haven't got writerus blockitis. But I am currently suffering from writerus slothitis. I've got plenty of stuff to write, I just need to get my lazy fingers in gear and click on Word instead of Internet explorer. :rolleyes:

[strider8]

I just can't think of names, for people or places. Why can't i think of original names? :confused:

[rohirrim TR]

I know what you mean, I make up name from all over, tolkien's elvish names, greek names roman names, latin, spanish, my storys are kind of a melting pot of languages and culture, but hey thats what fanasy is for I think :) :D

[hectorberlioz]

Name dictionaries are good investments. I recommend getting one that gives lots of lingual and cultural variations of names. For example, I liked the meaning of the name Alvin, but due to chipmunck associations there was no way I was going to stick my male lead with that name. The old english spelling though is Alwyn, which sounds and looks much better and fits the character perfectly.
If you don't feel like buying one there are plenty of free name dictionaries online, and they often have a bunch of obscure and interesting names that you wouldn't find elsewhere, as well as the old standards. :)

Now, I haven't got writerus blockitis. But I am currently suffering from writerus slothitis. I've got plenty of stuff to write, I just need to get my lazy fingers in gear and click on Word instead of Internet explorer. :rolleyes:
Haha, Alvin brings many chipmunk images to my ming;).

Now, I stay away from names like Alawyn, Trywynn etcc...I'm just not good at matching names like that with the characters I write. In my Big Story, I use a lot of typicla french names, and german.

Hmmm....I'm not sure if I have Writerus Blockitis, or Slothitis...It's pretty bad whatever it is. My Big Story ( "A Tale of Dr. Frankenheimer and co.") is undergoing MAJOR plot revision, pretty much the whole deal in some spots. A lot of work to do on it, besides finishing it as well. Thinking up an ending is really stumping me even though I've made a lot of moves in that direction...

[Bombadillo]

I don't write fantasy, but I once thought of a foolproof way for picking fantasy names. Really, it's not meant to be taken seriously, but try it anyway and maybe you'll get lucky. Just ombine the name of a musical instument with a geographical formation. That should give you a quick idea, and just play around with it.

estuary + stratovarius = Estarius
For the comic relief character, use words that sound dumb:
dolsimer + plateau = Platimer :D

At least it's fun, if no real use to you.

I had bad writer's block all this week. I had an essay to write for school, but couldn't get myself to even pick a topic. (I was debating between six from a list of twenty.) Finally I just picked the two that seemed most complimentary and wrote my paper on both of them, in five minutes. I barely thought about it, and was very, very vague. But that's perfect, because it was supposed to be a research paper and now that I've got all my ideas out, I just have to plug in the research. Yay!

[hectorberlioz]

It's amazing how intelligent your stuff can turn out when you write mindlessly.

[Curubethion]

I found a small book called "The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth" by Ruth S. Noel, and it's really helpful for coming up with names. Just tweak 'em a little so they're not totally from Tolkien's Elvish...and there you go!

[rohirrim TR]

yeah thats kind of what I do except I just take stuff from the Silmarillion index of names.

[hectorberlioz]

I found a small book called "The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth" by Ruth S. Noel, and it's really helpful for coming up with names. Just tweak 'em a little so they're not totally from Tolkien's Elvish...and there you go!
My sis owns that book, and she' actually learned a bit of elvish. It IS a good name factory;)

[katya]

First, I think if you`re willing to spend that much time re-writing a couple of pages a million times, why not just do it after you`ve got more done? For example, you decide a few pages in you wanna change something major. Just keep writing from where you are as if the change happened and then go back later. The main thing is, you can always go back as much as you want, and you`ll have to re-write less times if you get further along before you do it. It`s better to have a lot done, because it gives you confidence and a clearer view of where the story is gonna end up. You can fix the details whenever you want. I know if I had done re-writes of my story a little bit of a time I never would`ve gotten anywhere. I waited until I was halfway done with the whole thing. It changed a lot. I edited the first draft of that heavily, then in the process of typing it out it gets tweaked a little more. And as far as plot, it varies by person but I think it helps to know what the main conflict of the story is and what`s gonna happen at the climax (even if you`re not decided on the ending yet) so you have something to aim for and keep focused.

As for writer`s block, I get stuck a lot. But at those times, I usually either skip to a section of the story I do know how it`s gonna go down, or just write stuff badly and go back and fix it later as I decide how I want it. It`s easier to fix something that`s there than to just produce something good out of nowhere. And since it can take me months to decide on a name, I usually just think of a temporary one and write it in then go back and change it. If you`re writing it in word you can do it easily by using "replace with". Most of my name changes come in re-writing phase though so it doesn`t matter what was there before.

My current story re-write is 22 pages in word and the rough draft about 70 pages in a notebook (and I write really small). I haven`t written a word since I got to Japan so progress kinda stopped. But I`m gonna try and write today because I am starting to forget what was happening in the story and that scares me.

EDIT: a note on temporary names. If it doesn`t mess you up too much, why not? My story is really serious, and dark and sad, but there`s this one guy in the military in it and I can`t think of a good name for him yet so I`ve just been calling him "General Funnypants". :D

[Tamuril Sirfalas]

After several attempts and rewrites over the past three years, my full-length novel is still on the fourteenth page.

Anyone else having a similar problem? Of course. Now fess up. :)
ok right now i am on my 20th page and am very stuck! the second novel is on its like 48th page and i cant seem to get inspired.help!!lol :D

[Curubethion]

To get unstuck, you might want to consider throwing in a dilemma of minor to grand scale. Possibly tie it into the plot...

Or, if you're getting hung up on a scene, write its conclusion as is, and go on. You can edit later.
This is the best advice I can think of now...

[Acalewia]

Agreed. Writing the ending helps a lot. For me I've had problems with how to word minor events leading up to a major event. Which is the problem im having with one of my novels.
If your having problems with names, sometimes a baby name book will help. Of course this depends on the type of story your writing. It's not very helpful with fantasy, I've found. :o

[Lady Marion Magdalena]

First, I think if you`re willing to spend that much time re-writing a couple of pages a million times, why not just do it after you`ve got more done?

Minor obsessive-compulsive tendencies? It makes sense if you think about. After all, what are stories except ideas which the writer becomes fixated on to the point where they keep growing and eventually become too large for the writer's mind to handle at which point the writer puts them down on paper.

If one couples the ability to be so obsessed with an idea that it becomes a full fledged story with perfectionist tendencies then the compulsion to rewrite small chunks over and over and over again emerges.

Or it could just be a reaction to the discovery that if one does 'get more done' and then decides to change a key idea, suddenly instead of just a few pages to rewrite one has an entire book to revise and a lot of that revision will turn out to be scrapping and starting from scratch about half the scenes one has already struggled through.

So those of us who rewrite as we go are either obsessive-cumpulsive, perfectionists, lazy or a combination of the three. :p

If your having problems with names, sometimes a baby name book will help. Of course this depends on the type of story your writing. It's not very helpful with fantasy, I've found.
That is a difficult trap to get out of... if you find you've used names whose meanings depend on real-world linguistics/culture in a fantasy world and you really don't want to have to change the names of all your characters there are a couple ways to gloss it over.

First: Don't use the melting pot rule of naming. Readers are more likely to notice that the names have been transplanted if you take names from several different languages and mix them together. Instead give groups of characters who share orgins within the fantasy world names which share linguistic orgins from this world.
e.g. Give characters from Kingdom A names derived from germanic languages and characters from Kingdom B names derived from sanskrit.

Second: Perfect the other elements, if the reader is enjoying the story enough they'll probably forgive the name discrepancy. Also known as the 'They'll never notice...' principle. :D

And speaking of writerus blockitus... I should really be working on a short story for creative writing right now. Oops! :rolleyes:

[Serenoli]

I think I have, for quite a while, suffered from the re-writing problem. Which is why, for a long long time, I never progressed beyond page 3! :D

And, recently, i told myself what Katya says, (not in so many words, of course) and I'm glad to say its disappearing... with occasional relapses... I think I'm rather lazy, and a perfectiontist.

[strider8]

I often think of story ideas for a different book even though I'm all ready writing another so I have 1 started book and another book plot in my mind.