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Warning: I got stuck on a fantasy novel for a year until I tried the 'three-sentence scene' trick from a workshop in Portland.
My problem was overthinking every single paragraph, trying to make it perfect before moving on. At that workshop, the instructor made us write each scene's core action, conflict, and change in just three rough sentences, no details allowed. I forced myself to do that for my whole first draft, and it broke the block completely by showing me the story's skeleton. Has anyone else used a brutal simplification method like that to get past a major writing stall?
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tara_martin18d agoMost Upvoted
Sounds like you turned your novel into a grocery list and it actually worked. I spent six months trying to write the perfect metaphor for a haunted teapot before giving up and just writing "teapot is spooky, guy is scared, now the tea is blood." Felt stupid but finally got to chapter two.
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