#i'm shuffling some stuff around in my room and i have a couple of poster tubes i haven't put up yet

[meyerlansky]

so far, after like 20 years of being A Fan of various things, the only thing i am EMBARRASSED about having been in the fandom deep enough to spend money on merch and stuff is rooster teeth/achievement hunter

[patchdotexe]

Spins you. Hi. How new place. How are things. How are Pepper and Jojo.

spins!!! hi!!

things are okay! my bedroom is... not entirely unpacked, i still have to reckon with Oh My God I Own So Many Clothes, but it's a nice space to be in!

today i set up my tablet in the side room, although i haven't started drawing yet because i needed to do some cleaning and i'm waiting for the drawing glove to dry. im.. not too keen on the side room right now because it's pretty barren, but we're hoping to get some more shelving so i can put my knicknacks on display again and i want to put up posters finally and that should help it feel a bit less empty :>

pepper is having a bit of a rough time adjusting - we had to keep her in the side room while moving and she was freaked out by us going back and forth a lot, so for the first couple nights she was very clingy and vocal but she's settling down now that we have the living room set up and she's got a couple kitty beds to hang out in with my parents

jo meanwhile is completely unbothered :p she DOES keep wanting to get into the garage though so we have to be careful - the way to the garage is through the kitchen and the kitchen is her favorite place so any time we have the door to the back open we have to shoo her away

overall i like the new place a lot. there's definitely stuff to get used to (i hear water in the pipes in my bedroom sometimes bc of upstairs neighbors doing stuff, the layout is basically "our old place but rotated" so its hard to orient myself, we're still unpacking so a lot of stuff is misplaced or disassembled) but it just. feels so much better. its a bit silly because we are literally next door to our old place, but being downstairs instead of upstairs and having the opportunity to shuffle furniture around and me getting to pick a new room that has more space in it has revolutionized everything

[seenashwrite]

Dear Nash, I've finally figured out the perfect question for you. I'm in a pickle. No- not an *actual one*, though most of our conversations end up involving pickles for some reason. But that's besides the point. Thing is, I've got writers block. I've just passed the stage of denial and have come to accept that this is what I've got. So question is- do you have any tips for overcoming writers' greatest dilemma?

The interns and a handful of your fellow Nashooligans who are currently milling about NashHole, Inc. Headquarters have turned their heads, eyes widened and brows creased-and-or-raising at my Dean-channeled, supes-confident outburst. Mainly because they have, on more than one occasion, seen me stomping about and cursing under my breath at this dilemma, but my darling L-Dubs, you have sought out the ideal oracle for this, as I hold the map and compass needed to escape Deadly Dullsville. 

Oh, and - I’m assuming you’ve tried the usual, which is typically the advisement collective of walking away from it for an hour or two, standing and stretching, getting a change of scenery [taking tablet/laptop to another room/location], listening to music, and/or working on a different story…. yeah, they’re about 60/40 on the “Worked For Nash!” scale, too.

The TL;DR of the breakdown below can fit under the umbrella […ella, ella, ey, ey, ey] of my do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-$200, top-of-the-pops rule:

Writer, Know Thyself

Get egotistical, get self-absorbed, get haughty with this - draw from reader feedback if need be to do so, if it doesn’t come naturally - and remind yourself of what the Lips Style-In-A-Sentence would be. For me, more often than not, I get props for the cadence of my writing, both dialogue and plot flow, so I guess mine would go something like…

Nash was conceived in a laboratory with equal parts Sorkin and Sherman-Palladino, adopted and raised by Whedon and Fisher, christened the godchild of Tarantino and Fey, and often told bedtime stories by Rhimes and the Coen Brothers, all of whom served to have her drinking and snarking and looking crookedly at the world far too early.

“But, Nash! All of those people are screenwriters. Stories aren’t in the visual medium. You’re off your rocker!” 

Hmmm… am I?

[The above question was completely rhetorical, no one answer. Ahem.]

Now, here’s the Dean says “HELL, NO!” thing I’ll get out of the way right now:

Don’t go reading other fanfic, and don’t read books/stories/etc. [meaning: published authors’ stuff] that are in the genre wheelhouse of the type of story you’re struggling through, because we’re looking to spark a light bulb moment here, and you don’t want to moth around someone else’s glow accidentally. 

And speaking of your story’s genre, I’m not talking about those bullshit, too-vague genre categories in fanfic of “angst”, “fluff” and “smut”.  You know what I’m driving at - what’s the chewy center of your story? Is your story focus on characters’ interpersonal dynamics? Mystery? Humor? 

So:

(1) Know your plot

You’ve got a tag line for yourself - what’s your tag line for the story?

This is not necessarily a summary, though it could serve as one if it provides enough detail, sure. This is more what we’d see on the movie/TV “poster” in our minds. The story that’s next out for me is called “The Bell-Watcher’s Daughter”, and my tagline for it would be something like “The only way to make sure you never get buried alive is to never get buried at all.”

It’s not supposed to tell the plot, it’s just supposed to entice. It’s kinda like blogs that have bothered to do a “title” thing - mine is “A Supernatural Fanfiction Experiment”. We’d have to do a poll to determine who clicked because of that & that alone, but the point is a tagline should immediately draw some curiosity, be it positive or negative or “….the f*ck does that mean?”. 

(2) Kick-offs & Wrap-Ups

If you haven’t done so already - and get this done right damn now - flesh out in doc/on paper your opening & your ending. They may not stay this exact way, the concrete ain’t set, the leaves haven’t turned, but the point is the story has a start point and an end point - no sense in trying to gun the engine if you ain’t even got on the road, and the destination is unknown.

Both for opener & closer, same gist applies. In examples below, I’m stealing a handful from my own stories because laziness, not because I think I’m the awesomest who ever awesomed. And these aren’t the only ways to start/end a story of course, because caveats, exceptions, blah-blah-biscuits, but we’re trying to spark your brain, here.

If they aren’t in active voice, then make ‘em an intriguing passive, but regardless, both should lean into prompting the reader to go on.

–> A single, kicky sentence  with no extraneous qualifiers:

“Dean stared down the barrel of the gun.”

“Sam smiled, closed the book, and returned it to the shelf.”

“The rotted orphanage had been haunted since the day the foundation was poured.”

“When Dean walked into the library, all shuffling slippers and sips of coffee, she began to read aloud.”

“She paints the roses before burning them.”

….OR…..

–> A paragraph of a few poignant sentences/thoughts:

“I inhaled deeply, letting my eyes close and my head rest atop my folded arms. I’m not sure how long I was like that, thinking too hard, trying to recall the scent. Never even heard the approaching footsteps.”

“The sky was different in Texas. He couldn’t speak to Arizona or Colorado or Nevada, or even Mexico, but he knew what he knew.  It was something about the way the sun cut through, something about the tint of the blue.”  

“He made sure he was out of state again, staying in a dingy motel in a bad part of the random city he’d selected. And he thought hard on the couple he’d chosen to spare as he laid quietly atop the stained bedspread, eyes closed and smiling. Even when he heard the dogs begin to howl.”

Okay, okay, okay. We got you squared away. We got our start and stop. Now to the journey in between, which is where you’re stalled. Here’s how you focus to bust out of that dirt-nap, Beatrix Kiddo-style.

Writer’s Block boils down to FLOW - you had a rhythm, then you lost it. And you gotta have it. We want readers to be able to see this in their minds, like they’re watching it unfold in front of them literally or on a stage or on a screen, be it TV or movie, right?

While they don’t write in long-form, screenwriters gotta know how to get in and get out regarding setting and tone, and they gotta know how to write dialogue that can flow off an actor’s tongue, so here’s some resources to peruse [and, y’know, it’ll get different gears in your mind whirring, if nothing else].

I direct you to three hubs that breakdown these very things - the gottas and the don’t gottas alike:

(1) Cinema Sins

Jeremy & co. know their stuff, these are quick watches, these are fun, and while it’s all couched in humor [about 20% of the “sins” are purely for goofball purposes/are part of recurrent shtick], they make phenomenal points. 

These are gonna dial in on common storytelling missteps like gaps that should’ve been filled vs. wasting time on something else, superfluous elements, trope-y laziness, overdoing a given thing, repeating what’s already been stressed - if these things are happening in your story, they’re slowing down your brain and distracting you, so cut-cut-cut. Comb through what you’ve got and if there’s a shred of doubt as to whether you wanna re-tool fill-in-the-blank & keep it, chuck it into another document for the time being. 

Why I Recommend? - Too Much Of Something = A Block

ETA: Well, not so much “add” as “replace”.....

Since I wrote this response, I’ve noticed that Cinema Sins seem to have lost their way/don’t seem to know what they want to be any longer. While there are moments of snark and funny in a given video, they just come off as.... deflated, I’ll call it. They fall back on their recurrent shtick more and more frequently than prior, and I confess I’m confused as to their movie choices (minus the ones that relate to an upcoming movie release) for some time now. 

While they’ll still point out the things that keep happening over and over again, not just in the movie at hand but across storytelling in general, I feel like it’s gonna be too cumbersome for you to seek the solid examples out - and for me, too, ‘cause I ain’t hunting for ‘em!

I would instead recommend Red Letter Media. I’ve long been a subscriber of theirs, agree with easily 90% of their observations, and everything about their vids are so conversational and fun. And, they’re gonna be a good overall resource because they believe without solid plots and characters, you’re sunk - all the bells and whistles won’t mean a thing if the story and the people within it are crappily done. 

(2) Every Frame A Painting

This dude’s an editor, so structure is the name of the game. It can be a deep dive, and not all will be applicable to the written form, so pick and choose vs. a playlist launch. The crux of the messages have to do with - as you’ve likely guessed from the name - how scenes are framed.

Translation to writing: how you’re describing things that happen in between your dialogue. Whose eyes we’re seeing through, whose emotions are most important when we [readers & characters] experience fill-in-the-blank, should this moment be filled with cacophony or melody or pin-drop quiet, why this is happening here instead of there in the story.

Why I Recommend? - Inefficient Descriptions of Setting/Action/Perspective = A Block

(3) Lessons From The Screenplay

This is the money shot: Technique, technique, technique. Why was that scene so tension-filled even though nothing particularly dramatic was happening? How the hell did I end up rooting for that unlikable character? Holy moly, there were clues pointing to that twist! 

These are short in length while dense in info, yet he presents them in an intelligent and understandable manner. He’s fair on flaws, but those aren’t the focus. Titles of his offerings include…..

“The Control of Information”

“Creating the Ultimate Antagonist”

“Empathy for the Anti-Hero”

“How to Evoke Emotion”

“Telling a Story from the Inside Out”

“Controlling Information”

Why I Recommend? - Unwitting Sloppy Technique = A Block  

Bottom line: I think we tend to believe writer’s block boils down to what’s missing - those big ol’ white spaces in docs & all - but more often than not, what’s already there needs purging. Clear your path. Change your shoes. Trip less.

So sayeth the Nash, so say we all.