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Post by Kevin Sole on Mar 24, 2005 18:43:52 GMT -7
Hey folks,
Currently working on Portraits, and I'm stuck. Could be because I'm tired, or possibly because, unlike Warren Ellis, I'm not perpetually drinking. Or like Grant Morrison and on drugs. Take your pick.
Regardless, I'm stuck. I've been staring at one page for a couple of days now, and not sure where to go with it. Well, that's not true. I know WHERE I want to go with it, but I can't seem to get the words out.
Not that I'm asking for help. But I am curious. When you guys (and gals) get writer's block, what do you do to get around it?
I could work on other projects, but I don't want to spread myself too thin creatively. And working on Marvel pitches at this point seems kind of.. pointless.
So what do you do?
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Post by attoboy on Mar 24, 2005 19:11:04 GMT -7
I was working on a bunch of scripts last summer and found that the best thing is to just walk away. Don't try to force it. The answer will come from the most unlikely source. You'll be walking down 17th Ave. and see a poodle with a bad haircut and the answer will hit you. Anyway, that's what worked for me.
It also helps to organize your thoughts. Sometimes you already have your answer, but it's cluttered with other stuff.
Or just send everything to Andrew and ask him to write it for you. I've been saving that option for a rainy day.
Cheers! -Derek
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Post by EmperorCharon on Mar 24, 2005 19:14:01 GMT -7
Ok, so, that was ME, not increasing my post count. Yeah, I find I often have to distance myself from it. Work the dialogue and whatnot through my head. But then, sometimes I sit down at the computer and whatever dialogue I had in my head, ends up not working on paper. Anybody else with thoughts? Y'know, something besides poodles?
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Post by Mr. Nick on Mar 24, 2005 20:14:39 GMT -7
Dude, the thing I love about comics is that ANYTHING can happen. It could be perceived as daunting, but stare down at that page and realize that any crazy thing you imagine can come to life. Think of all the things your character could possibly do, from the mundane to the extraordinary (I'd recommend extraordinary) and even put yourself into their shoes. What would you do? How would you feel?
I like to yammer into a voice recorder. Open a dialogue between characters with me playing both parts (funny voices optional.)
Sit and listen to some kick ass inspirational music and just let the ideas flow. It'll give you a rest and something might pop into your brain.
Or steal your ideas.
I have an idea for a comic where the grimace gets lost in a maze and the reader has to help him find his way back to the Mconalds. Onward . . . to glory!
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Post by Andrew on Mar 24, 2005 21:33:15 GMT -7
Cut and pasted from a reply I wrote to someone asking pretty much the same question on the Speakeasy messageboards:
First I take the dog for a walk, because a) he wants one, even if he just had one, and b) it puts me in a completely neutral space, where the only thing I really have to deal with is my own thoughts and occasionally a baggie of dog poop. I refuse to have a cell phone or any other way for people to get ahold of me while I'm not in the house/at the office, so the distractions while walking are minimal and just taking a breather can be very helpful.
If that doesn't work, it's over to brain food. First, I'll try and read necessary research materials for whatever I'm working on or going to be working on soon. I loathe doing research, but it can get the juices flowing.
If I just can't take research, I'll read something I actually want to read--either the thing I'm in the middle of reading, or a work I know I'll enjoy reading that I've read before. That last one is handy because I can get completely wrapped up in books and ignore work, so reading something I already know the end of lets me drop the book and go back to writing without the compulsion to find out what happens next.
If I can't focus enough to read, I'll try and find a movie, on DVD/video. I prefer one that I've seen before, again so I can stop in the middle without difficulty, or one that's actually in a theater (which lets me actually watch/enjoy the thing without constantly feeling guilty about how I should go upstairs and get some writing done. Well, not as guilty, anyway.)
If THAT doesn't work, I'll try TV or bed for a bit.
And if, at the end of all that, I still can't get the writing mojo, I'll do what one of my old art school teachers did--clean/organize the office. I don't believe I've ever actually finished cleaning my office. Doing some almost completely braindead work lets the mind wander, and soon the tedium of it all in an environment where all I've got to do is sit down to do something I actually love to do drives me back to the computer to actually get some work done.
One of these days I'll get it into my head to start cleaning before I do all the other stuff, and my production will skyrocket. One of these days.
I've managed to avoid videogames almost entirely, to this point. I've got enough distractions in my life already, and I suspect if I actually started playing games with my computer, nobody would ever hear from me again.
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Post by Temperance on Mar 29, 2005 23:29:55 GMT -7
My best ideas come to me while I'm driving, or when I'm in the middle of something important and I can't write it down.
So whenever an idea strikes me, and I have to speed all the way home to write it out before I forget it... hope and pray you're not on the road or crossing the street or something.
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Amilee
New Member
Ahhhh! It's a tree!!!
Posts: 22
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Post by Amilee on Apr 30, 2005 6:34:59 GMT -7
To be honest I've never really had writers block, ever, because I, for some reason, have a limitless pool of imaginative energy....I'm really not trying to toot my own horn either.... It's so wierd, and if there were a freaking job for a "muse" out there I'd be rolling in it!!! Pm me babe and maybe I can give you some ideas.... (god I sound so stuck up! *hits herself with the buddah board of rightiousness...* Right...Sorry.)
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Jason
New Member
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Post by Jason on Jun 17, 2005 8:26:14 GMT -7
This topic's been here awhile, so I don't know if anyone is still here...
When I don't know what to write and I'm working on a project, I'll step away from it, and into a blank sheet of paper. Rather then writing the script/story/article/whatever, I'll write around it. About it. If I've got two cold war vets from the Red side of the Berlin wall reminiscing over old times, I'll write about their history, their personality, whatever.
For years, what held back my writing process was a terror of the wrong word. That each failure of grammer or syntax, each wet, sloppy cliche, would decimate the tenous labour I had set for myself. Grabbing the typewriter, or a pen, and just trying to keep moving, even if it's crap, lessened that worry. The pre-writing is for nobody but myself. (And my legion of biographers, aeons hence from now!)
The most important part is to keep the pen moving or the fingers typing. Often, when I'm concerned with what to say next, or what the right peice of dialogue is, it usually means I'm trying to craft the perfect text. Extra-writing, or pre-writing, gives me the ability to 'sketch,' by just throwing the words out there in the general form I'm sensing, rather then hunting for the perfect lines.
By doing this ahead of working on the actual document, it means that by the time I'm actually working on the script, I know where I want to go and how to get there. I know the characters intimately, before the even enter the scene.
Just some thoughts.
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