101 Ways to Cure Writer's Block

1. One of the best ways to cure writer's block is to write about your writer's block. Write about what you're stuck on and what your previous ideas were so you can lead off of them.

2. Visit museums and libraries, go to movies and sports games, listen to comedians, and attend concerts. Go about your ordinary routine and make what you take for granted part of what helps you in breaking writer's block.

3. Practice patience. Taking the time to literally smell the roses can be intoxicating and can provide you with much needed insight into seeing the world in slow motion, rather than going in fast forward, as so many people seem to do as they rush through their lives.

4. Derive surety of your ability to write from creative writing quotes and other writer quotations. Sometimes even when you are thinking it, reading those same words from someone else can be just the motivating factor you need to cure the writer's block that plagues you.

5. Schedule time to write. Make sure you set standards for yourself and strive to live up to them. You are the one who controls your own motivation to write. Don't let anything steal away from the time you set aside.

6. Make sure that your meaning is clear in your writing. Avoid the use of double entendres when you write, but use them to see the different meanings that can be taken from an unclear sentence. You may just see a way to shine a new light on something and clarify the way it is best understood. 

7. Mold your writing craft even further by dedicating some time to creative writing research.  The more you know, the more you have to say. By extension, the better your writing will come across. 

8. State your writing themes clearly through the use of all the literary attributes that make your writing well worth reading.  If your story is based around the theme of loss, avoid injecting too much optimism throughout the writing.  Keep your themes consistent.

9. What are the ABCs of the writing process for you? Alphabetize the steps you take to perfect your writing groove.

10. What is creative writing? Is it always fictional, or can it be true? Define what you believe creative writing to mean to you and write to your heart's content.

11. Never quit. Embrace your writer's block as a means to an end and write down why writing is so important to you. You're sure to come up with something profound.

12. Revel in your characters. Create their personalities through character mapping strategies. Make them vivid and adaptable so the majority of your reading audience will be able to empathize with each of them.

13. Create conflicts. Ensure that your readers are on the edges of their seats, or that they have some desire to see the antagonist fail or the protagonist succeed. Give your readers something and/or someone to root for.

14. Be aware of your feelings and practice emotional writing. If you don't feel anything for your characters, your readers are most certainly not going to. You must find a way to connect with your characters to ensure that your readers can.

15. Work on creating a family tree and learning how to write a family that shows the collaboration of different characters within the same story.  By detailing their connections to one another, you can come up with more ways to create tension or plan fun gatherings for them. 

16. Employ your characters in jobs that reflect their personalities.  Practice how to write a job description for each character so you know what they are expected to do in their jobs, and then decide how they will actually go about performing the tasks given to them.

17. Along those same lines, do some creative resume writing and figure out, based on what your characters’ jobs are, how you can best keep each character grounded in whom he or she really is without getting too far off the beaten track. 

18. Remember those “choose your own adventure” books?  You got to decide which page to turn to and which conflict to pursue.  Write your own adventure and test out two different versions of the same story to see which one appeals to you more.

19. Send your work to a writing coach. Let the coach help you edit and revise your work by strengthening grammar and delivering the maximum amount of character development, plot twists, and more.

20. Try out a writing service such as MasterWriter. With a built-in rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, dictionary of phrases, and much more, you definitely have a higher chance of figuring out just how you want your writing to look and what words will best get you there.

21. Beating writer's block may seem like a hard task, but by reading interviews with authors, you too can learn how to write creatively. Brush up on what the masters do and how they do it so well. You can't put a price on advice, so use it wisely.

22. Go to some creative writing retreats. Feedback is an essential part of the writing process. Talk to other writers and share your expertise so they feel comfortable sharing theirs. Cooperation can often lead to collaboration, and through networking and other retreat possibilities, you never know just whom you may meet and what they can do for your writing career.

23. Online creative writing classes are helpful for emergent writers as well as those who have been in the profession for a longer span of time. It never hurts to brush up on your writing repertoire and see and hear new concepts that have entered the writing arena.

24. Sign up for writing magazines, e-zines, and other newsletters that give out helpful hints, tips, and techniques to help you embellish and tone down your writing when needed.

25. Test out some group writing exercises. Passing your work around in a group and seeing where someone else may take your story can lead to inspiring thoughts and newfound ideas.

26. Creative writing story starters can make you begin stories in completely different ways than your writing counterparts. Use your unique take on the story starter you choose to use and begin your writing of the next great short story or novel.

27. A specific form of a story starter would be the triple decker writing prompt. Use three words, phrases, or ideas that have no obvious connection to each other and write about them all in the same story.

28. End your stories, poems, and other writings with a bang.  Writing conclusions that sparkle and grab readers is an essential part of writing purposeful endings.

29. Play some creative writing games to get your creative juices flowing. Build your writing from the ground up when you take the time to play around with your words and make them ripe with meaning.

30. Some people might find it strange if inanimate objects suddenly became animated and could talk or move around. Sometimes, though, making the inanimate real can be the perfect technique to excite your writing. Add personification words and phrases into your writing repertoire and see your writing from a different perspective.

31. In terms of perspective writing, you want to be sure that it is clear who is speaking to whom. You must also try to see the world and everything in it through different lenses so that you can personify inanimate objects and understand other people's viewpoints.

32. Spend some time asking yourself some questions. By asking a lot of "what if" questions, you open yourself up to a myriad of possibilities for the craziest of subject matters. What if April flowers brought May showers and not the other way around? Questions like this definitely rely on a keen imagination.

33. Whether or not you have a desire to be a songwriter, you can still use music to keep you from getting into a writing funk. Find music to write by that is chock full of metaphors, similes, and other rhythmic qualities that make it fun to listen to and easier to find inspiration from.

34. Creative writing images and inspirational cartoons can serve as focal points for writing captions and stories. Being able to visualize what you are writing about, especially by seeing it directly in front of you, can make the writing process much easier.

35. Don't throw anything away. Do some snowball writing and let your writing pile up so you have more to choose from. You never know when you'll want to use a line you've written.

36. Write down your dreams. Put a pad somewhere near you so that you can start journaling dreams. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you can jot down some quick notes about what you just dreamt. This is important, because you may not necessarily remember it in the morning.

37. Literary illusions are fun. Do not get them confused with allusions, though. When you use literary illusions, you make your reader think a bit harder about what you are writing. You trick them into believing you're writing about one thing, but then share the fact that you're writing about another. This technique keeps readers on their toes.

38. Now for allusions. Allusions are references to people, places, or things from history or other works of literature. When you allude to something, you are making a connection between what you are already writing or speaking about and a comparable idea. References are always helpful, so using them, albeit sparingly, can be a handy technique to store in your writing arsenal.

39. Rebus writing can help you learn how to write pictures. Make captions and see how rebus writing can broaden the spectrum of writing by making you think harder about what pictures mean.

40. After reading interviews with writers, you may find that you want to try doing some of your own interviews. Interview interesting people who have stories to tell of their pasts, or even their present lives. Learn about others and make the most of what they have to tell you. Shape it all into fabulous writing ideas, but remember to give credit where it is due.

41. Make sure your writing follows some sort of sequence. See story sequencing activities to help you out in this endeavor. Whether or not it is chronological, you must have some structure so that readers are not confused as to where the story is going, how it got there, or who is speaking.

42. Watch for homophones in your writing.  Just because you can only use one spelling of a word to make your point doesn’t mean that the other spelling of it can’t be used as well.  Your story about a woman who bares all for a photo shoot can also employ the use of a bear that appears on a camping trip. 

43. Just like those “Magic Eye” books where there is an image within an image that you have to see, there are words within words to be found.  The letters do not have to be placed in a forward sequence. Just think of how many words can be found in the word “courageous,” for example.  “Car” is one, “age” is two, “ego” three, and so on.

44. Take word meaning from context.  A marriage doesn’t only have to be the wedding of two people, but it can be construed as a marriage, or meeting, of the minds.  Don’t assume a word’s meaning if you can take it and shape it for use within another context.

45. Friendship, love, hate, and maturity are all words that can be viewed by various people to mean numerous things.  These abstract nouns are useful in considering different viewpoints and writing different stories that all revolve around the same topic, but for a variety of perspectives. 

46. When you understand how to write flash fiction, you know that it is the writing of short, short stories.  You need to say a lot with very little.  The more you can practice cutting down your word count and still expressing yourself clearly and succinctly, the better. 

47. What would you want people to remember about you if you weren’t around anymore?  Consider this same question, but in terms of your characters.  Try writing a eulogy for each of your characters so you can better understand whom they are and what they have to offer the world around them. 

48. Sometimes we need to say certain things in more pleasant ways to lessen the sting of what it all means.  Euphemism examples can be helpful in committing you to a writing practice in which you say what you want to say, but still take into account the audience you are writing for and how they will react to certain ideas and situations you present to them.

49. Play with words. Use examples of puns to enhance your creative writing style.

50. Weave your writing ideas in ways that make readers thoroughly engaged and satisfied. Learning how to write speeches can be a helpful technique on the path to doing this.

51. The idiosyncrasies of the English language are many and even include the idea of how to write palindromes. Words that are spelled the same backward and forward can inspire you to look at your writing from different angles.

52. One way to define an oxymoron is as a collaboration of terms that are stuck together to create new, and sometimes illogical, meaning. Use oxymorons to ensure your own writing success with your own interesting creations.

53. The psychological technique of free association can be helpful when doing creative free writing. It can help you come up with innovative and profound ways to write, even on the spur of the moment.

54. ABC does not have to stand for the American Broadcasting Company. Make it mean the 'Amazing Barfing Competition' and write about some keg house college students who take it a little too far with their drinking one night. Make acronyms work for you depending on what you want them to mean.

55. Keep up with news stories and practice how to write a headline, a picture caption, and other related article information. By practicing your writing of the news, you can hone your fiction writing as well.

56. Alliteration examples can be fun when you try coming up with tongue twisters and other interesting phrases. Practice repeating similar sounds to see what alliterative techniques sound best to you.

57. When writing for a specific audience, be sure that you take in all of the nuances of that audience to make for the most worthwhile writing. This is true even when doing child creative writing, because they can often be the harshest critics if they don't like what they're reading.

58. Place your characters in different settings and time frames. Just be sure that the world you create around them does not use too many anachronisms. You want to be sure that your facts seem genuine and adequately researched.

59. Do some holiday creative writing and embrace the holidays that happen all year round. Write about your sentiments for each holiday in narrative, descriptive, or some other form.

60. Understanding the five senses and how to incorporate them into your writing is quite important. The use of sensory details can make or break the descriptive nature of your writing if they are not used appropriately.

61. Similes and metaphors attract attention because they make readers think a bit harder about what is being stated. They are intentionally placed to invest readers in a bit of added symbolism.

62. Prefixes and suffixes can help elaborate on the meaning of a word. Get your writing fix by combining these with different words to find your own unique writing form.

63. Use name interpretations to give more depth to your characters and add to their symbolic presence. Attaching meaning to their names will make readers more curious as to how their actions are reflected through their descriptions.

64. Poem starters are the perfect way to begin writing poetry. You don't even have to make your poems rhyme.

65. Acrostic name poems are a fairly common style of poetry that people write. See where first letters lead you as you write in an acrostic fashion.

66. The white noise that ingratiates itself into our daily lives can be considered an inhibiting factor to those writers who enjoy peace and quiet. However, noises can be inspirational, and different sounds can bring about thoughts of old memories or other ideas for the creative process. Use onomatopoeia poems and words in your writing or even just to help you get started.

67. Have you ever colored pictures by numbers? Try out poetry by numbers and see how thinking of numbers and all the phrases that go along with them can make for many more substantial writing ideas.

68. Found poetry is another exciting way to consider beginning your writing. You can work on found stories as well, as the idea is the same. You use words, phrases, and even pictures that you have found or cut out of magazines and other places to create new and distinct poems and stories.

69. Writing with only a certain amount of syllables and lines can be difficult, but many people are masters of the craft of writing a haiku. Practice your haiku writing with the 5-7-5 syllabic format and see some haiku examples to help you out as well.

70. Pull out your rhyming dictionary and engage in the art of writing limerick examples all your own. The humor that you can embed in a limerick can make for a delightful read.

71. Infuse hyperbole poems and terms into your writing.  Exaggerate the most simplistic of ideas and make them seem more outrageous than they really are.

72. Read examples of other people's writing. Creative writing examples can provide you with much needed insight into what you are doing right and even what you can do differently to make your work even better.

73. Write a myth.  Think back on the gods and goddesses and write a different story that tells how they came to be so powerful.  Rewrite the tale of how the Earth was created.  Be unique and make the myth example you write come alive through your storytelling.

74. You may not be an actor, but if you love to write, you know good lines when you see them (or hear them!).  Think about the lines you love most in plays, movies, books, or television shows.  What makes them so great?  Create your own spin on those words as you learn how to write dialogue. 

75. Everyone knows about Shakespeare’s soliloquies.  Learning how to write a monologue can prove to be profound and consequential, and you can have your characters speak volumes through the expression of thoughts that are running through their heads.

76. Work on dialogue. Do not use the tags "he said" and "she said" all the time. Find other words for said to help your readers better understand the emotions and tendencies of your characters.

77. Write some journal entries. Jotting down your thoughts and analyzing your daily routine can do a lot for your writing. You will always have some ideas to go on in terms of what you can write about based on your everyday life.

78. Write your answers to some writing prompt questions and discover ideas that were lying dormant within your mind, waiting to be tackled by you as you put them into words.

79. Everyone wants to know how to write answers to these five questions: who?, what?, when?, where?, and why?  Maintain your readers’ interest and answer these early on.  Too much detail does not have to be given away to give your readers a keen sense of where the story is going. 

80. Move your story in the right direction by making sure to work on directed writing.  You are the director of what you are writing.  You tell your characters where to go, whom to talk to, what to believe, how to dress, what to do for a living, etc.  Direct them appropriately.

81. Learn how to write a memoir. Writing autobiographical accounts can lead to writing fictional stories that can be partially based on truth. Truth has the ability to allow for the most revealing and personal writing.

82. Creative writing examples are key to understanding the style you are writing in. So, glancing through memoir examples can prove helpful not only for writing memoirs, but for understanding how to view the world through your own eyes so writing about it can become easier.

83. Making an outline for a book review is much like making an outline for a novel or other piece of work you are writing.  Plot out your main points and critique yourself on the best course of action to take as you pursue your writing.

84. Rent some movies and garner all that you can from them.  Writing a movie review that details your favorite parts can help you to assess the adaptability of the actors and the characters they play.

85. Read, read, and read some more.  Read what you love and expound on what you thought of all of it in book reviews for teens or adults. Take the best parts of the book and use similar ideas that you make your own in your work.

86. While doing your creative writing research, hone your research paper writing by practicing some research paper thesis statements to get you on the right track.  

87. Work on learning how to write a thesis statement that sparkles. Try your hand at writing a thesis statement that would be the beginning of an essay explaining why you are a writer. This may help draw out your muse if you are forced to explain to others your passion and drive for the writing life.

88. Compose a narration.  Knowing how to write a narrative or story can be therapeutic in terms of helping you express emotions or explain thoughts that are lumped together in your head with no logical sequence. 

89. Writing descriptive essays can engage you in the most imaginative and stylistic type of essay writing.  Throw in some narration here and there to add another layer to your writing. 

90. Have you ever written an argumentation essay?  Yes or no, everyone has it in them to argue a point and make it clear why the viewpoint they have should be respected, if not taken as fact. 

91. Apply a healthy dose of persuasion in your writing and lure readers into wanting to read more of your work when writing a persuasive essay. Appeal to your readers’ better natures and instinctually write what you know they’ll enjoy reading. 

92. For every cause, there is an effect.  In both creative and academic writing, make sure your cause effect essay writing is clear and to the point. Explain why your causes have effects and why your effects have causes. Otherwise, you are selling your readers short. 

93. Classify your writing in the phenomenal category when you glance through some classification essay topics. Learn how to place your ideas into categories for how you will deliver the best possible pieces of writing to your readers.

94. Shed some light on similarities and differences between characters, settings, and other literary concepts by writing comparison contrast essays and other comparative creative writing. 

95. What does writing mean to you?  Everyone has a different take on what genre they want to write in, what got them interested in writing in the first place, and which authors are their favorites.  Definition essays are great forums for exploring the different ways that people see certain words and ideas.

96. Enter creative writing contests. If you don't enter, you'll never know if you could have had the chance to win. Don't sell your work short, either. You don't know what everyone else is sending in, so letting fear guide your decision will only hold you back from realizing your dream all that much sooner.

97. Enter some essay writing scholarships.  They are not just for young people anymore, but the majority do still lean toward high schoolers who are looking for college scholarships.

98. The importance of grammar in your writing will help you to edit, revise, and add deeper meaning to all that you write.

99. Don’t be afraid to use sentence fragments.  Just because your English teachers always told you that fragments are not complete sentences does not mean that they cannot be used in creative writing. 

100. Check for the usage of proper comma rules.  As you re-read your work and see if you’ve covered all your bases on this front, you may come across something in your writing that bears another once-over.

101. Avoid redundancy in writing. If you find that you are repeating yourself, you are getting stuck in a routine that you must pull yourself out of. Give your readers some credit and say things once so that you can move on to relating bigger and better details.

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