Help needed for a friend with writers block

[DavidJae]

I have a friend who is struggling with Writer's block. Specifically, he feels that he cannot write anything without looking at other people's work and using it as a guide for his narrative writing. I tell him this is normal and perfectly acceptable, but he has a hard time accepting it, feeling that he has no talent because of this.

If anyone has experience of this, or can offer any advice or guidance on this issue, I would appreciate it. Anything that can make him see that it is not a failure on his part would go a long way.

Thank you.

 

[Scribble]

Everything we create begins from other people's ideas... what makes it our own is how we reinterpret and recombine them.

Even if you want to purposefully do something so different from what has come before, you begin with what others have done and try to depart from it.

A good metaphor for creativity is dreams. One current theory about dreams is that while sleeping, sections of the brain experience random or wild electrical activity. When certain parts of the brain are stimulated, if they hold images and bits of memory information, they appear in our thoughts. Then the brain strings these together into "story", our natural means of understanding the world:

- A spatula
- Ninjas
- Your kitchen
- Your childhood friend

Next thing, you are having a dream about these elements, all assembled into a bizarre whole, from random parts. Creativity is kind of similar, for me at least - I put elements into the soup: literature, art, film, life experience, my own ideas, the ideas of others... and of course, a huge part of that comes from the writing of other people.

Rather than looking at that as a bad thing, if taking something from the writing of another helps you get going - it is good!

I had a point where I was getting stuck. I was in a funk with my current crop of ideas, they lost their magic. I decided to take a story I knew and re-spin it. I chose 1979 movie The Warriors, and asked the question - what if rather than New York street gangs, they were gangs of orcs, trolls, goblins, etc... What it led me to did not resemble any of that! The thing is that it got me started on something, then I made some new ideas, and away we go, off into new territory.

And even when you think you are being original, odds are, you aren't! Every great idea I have that I believed to be utterly unique, invariably it turns out that someone had a similar idea first. That is not a bad thing. In a way, that is part of what makes "story" work, because we find things that are familiar to us.

Even if you start with someone else's formula, if you work at it, allow it to be shaped by your own unique perspective, your originality will emerge.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Please tell him (or even better, have him read this page) that it is very common for writers to go through an imitation phase, and even to go through smaller imitation phases as we learn and grow. This doesn't mean that they aren't talented, not at all. Just as other artists learn by studying and imitating, say, great painters or sculptors or composers, we learn by reading and studying and imitating the writers who inspire us.

And tell your friend this isn't writer's block. There's actually no such thing. What he's doing is throwing up roadblocks to his own progress, and he can take them down again.

 

[Michael J. Tobias]

Agree 100% with what Scribble has written and with A. E. Lowan's assertion regarding writer's block. When I'm struggling, I find reading stuff I enjoy a great inspiration.

And btw, I'm currently working on a trilogy that could be described as a combination of Divergent and Game of Thrones. Yes, it's derivative. Yes, I admit it. No, I don't really care if people think it's not original...though everyone who has read sections of it tell me they can't wait until it's finished and none of them have mentioned it seems just like GOT for teens or anything like that. Oftentimes what we as authors see, because we have knowledge the reader doesn't, is nothing like what the reader sees (which is just another in a long list of reasons to have different people read your stuff for you)

BTW, ask your friend if he's ever seen the movie Avatar. Then ask him if he's ever seen Dances With Wolves. Same movie, different settings.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

"Originality is undetected plagiarism."
- William Ralph Inge

 

[Addison]

Sounds like you two are close. It doesn't sound so much like writer's block as it does self-doubt. Maybe it's both mixing into one toxic head ache.

If it's the self doubt; help him join a writing group. Even the site! Encourage him to let others, people he doesn't know, read his work so he'll get honest feed back. Then he'll see, once and for all, that he's a great writer.

If it's the writer's block; ask him to hand over all his fiction books and magazines and hide them. Even if you have your dog bury them in the back yard (in a weather proof box of course), get him away from the authors that he's comparing himself to. Then get him out doing something. Go on a trip, white water raft, hang glide, hunt, go clubbing. Or find a writing event where other authors are speaking. There, if the block is still nagging, he can ask if those authors ever felt the same way.

Hope this helps.

 

[Jabrosky]

BTW, ask your friend if he's ever seen the movie Avatar. Then ask him if he's ever seen Dances With Wolves. Same movie, different settings.

Actually I remember that Avatar received a lot of flack for this. I enjoyed it personally, as I'm a sucker for tribal jungle settings, but there were a ton of people mocking it as "Pocahontas in space". And then there were the critics who interpreted its tropes as fundamentally racist, but that topic might work better for a separate thread.

 

[Penpilot]

During the Renaissance, apprentice painters had to copy their master's work as part of their learning.

In all aspects of life, no matter the subject, we copy first and gain understanding then we create base on what we learned copying.

Take Mathematics, we start by learning theory and solving simple problems that have been answered already, 1+1=?. Then we move to things more complex, Solve for X where X+3=7. X^2+Y^2=8 and so on. In doing this, we're retracing/copying the path of those who came before. Once a person reaches a high enough level of understanding in Mathematics, they can push the boundaries of it, create new understanding and explore unknown aspects.

Like I said, this applies to everything in life whether you're learning about history, science, cooking, or how to shoot a basketball.

One thing everyone has to understand about writing is it's not magic. Hollywood has this way of mystifying it, making it more than it actually is and disregarding the simple hard work it requires. I remember a scene from a movie that had this writer getting praised for writing a great 10 pages. And the movie made it seem like this great feat that would guarantee him a best selling book. But when you think about it, ten pages is 2500 words. That's maybe one chapter/scene, a good days work, but he's going to need a lot more good days before he has a novel, like about 39 more--not to mention the time needed for edits and rewrites. That's like a carpenter showing you ten pieces of wood nailed together and saying, "This skyscraper is going to be awesome."

With things like throwing a baseball or doing the pole vault, most people understand that to be able to do those things well requires practice. Not only practice, but an understanding of the fundamentals mechanics of the actions, the theory behind them, then practice to refine the execution, all in the hopes of becoming good at it.

But with writing in general, most people don't think of it like that. Some think just because they know how to write a coherent sentence, then they automatically know how to tell a story. That's like Joe-Average thinking they can run a marathon just because they jog a little. Others think writing is this magic ability that one is born with. That's like thinking you can't play a piano because you can't play a song the first time you sit down on the bench. Neither is true.

Writing is a skill, like throwing a baseball. You need to understand theory, mechanics, and practice execution in order to get good. And maybe, just maybe, with enough practice, you become great and make the big leagues.

Human's learn by aping each other. That's the way it's been done since before language. We emulate. We imitate. We copy. We do this until we're ready to build on what we've learned. Born-with talent is over rated. It'll get you a head start. It may make understanding things a bit easier. But work, work is where things get done. It's where talent gets developed, like a muscle. And like muscle, you may not be born with the biggest, but put enough work in you'll be able to hold your own.

 

[skip.knox]

There will *always* be authors I'll never be as good as. The previous sentence is proof of this.

Someone is always faster than you, stronger than you, dances better than you. So what?

My best advice is: have your friend write garbage. Forget about that magnificent novel floating in the distant haze and write something short, concrete, with the full intent of throwing it away. Do this many times until writing becomes a habit. This is not unlike exercise. Do something, because the only thing worse is doing nothing.

Or, as a programmer said many years ago: anything worth doing is worth doing badly.