One of the scariest things a writer can do, besides hit Send, is write the first words of a novel. Sometimes the story flows like warm honey, but other times that white screen is like a vast desert. What can you do to beat the White Screen Blues?
Write What You Know
Mark Twain once said to write what you know, but how can you write something you haven’t experienced? Beth Vogt encourages us to keep an Emotion Journal and write down everything: how it feels during an argument or when the doctor’s given us bad news. Apply those emotions to your scene to help your readers live in your skin for a bit. Make it real enough to make them want to stay.
One True Sentence
Ernest Hemingway said write one true sentence. Put yourself in that scene and write the truest sentence you can about it. Become that point-of-view character and learn what he or she knows. Distill it down to the truth. Write it down.
One Word
Susie May Warren suggests we find one verb that exemplifies the emotion of the scene. If you can’t write anything else, decide whether you want the scene to be about escaping or forgiving.
Alternately, choose an emotion for the scene. There’s a book called the Emotion Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becky Puglisi, which lists all the nuances of emotion that your character could be feeling. If you can’t distill the scene down to a verb, start with an emotion.
The Number Five
Five is a lovely number. There are five senses: smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing. And there’s five Ws: who, what, when, where, and why. Beth Vogt also recommends that we write down all of these at the beginning of a scene. If you want to show not tell, add the smell of burning leaves or the crackle of the fire. Incorporate all of these elements into your scene and it’s half finished.
Try one or all of these to vanquish those white screen blues. Add any of your own weapons in the comments below.
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When Angela Arndt enjoys writing stories set in small Southern towns. She, her husband, and their three very large dogs (a lab mix, Staffordshire terrier, and a twelve pound poodle who thinks he’s a very large dog) live in the middle of a big. She would love for you to visit her website, http://www.angelaarndt.com, or her team blog, http://seriouslywrite.blogspot.com.