What a difference half an hour makes

Got a knotty plot problem? A character you need to flesh out? A location you need to describe or create?

When I am faced with a problem like this, I have often found that a very simple technique can get the juices flowing again. What is this? I hear you ask.

Well, it's called writing. That's right. Writing.

Here's what you do.

Put down the piece of writing you are stuck on. Get a fresh notebook, turn the page of the one you're using, or open a new computer file so that you have a blank page in front of you. Now write about your character, plot problem or whatever it is you're stuck on.

Set yourself the task of writing either:

a) three sides of A4

b) 1,000 words

c) for half an hour

d) whichever other means of measuring volume of writing you prefer

on this topic.

Hang on, I hear you say. Which part of "I'm stuck" do you not understand? If I could write for half an hour (or whatever) about this then I wouldn't be stuck, would I? Stay with me.

Start by writing down everything you know about the situation/character/location already. Then what you want to get from this exercise eg. "I need to know character X better" or "I need to know how character Y gets from their bedroom to the space station," or "I need to set a scene at Grandmother's house." This is priming the pump of creativity.

Then just brainstorm. Write down any idea that occurs to you, however outlandish, and include the ideas you are downright certain you'll never use as well as the promising ones. This isn't part of your final work - it's a brainstorming session. Just write down everything that comes to your mind. The important thing is filling the page, reaching the word count, or whatever.

Whatever you do, keep going until you've written 1,000 words or three sides or your half hour timer goes off. This is because necessity, or desperation, is the mother of invention. If you've summarised what you know, and written down the most obvious solution, and you're still got fifteen minutes to go, you'll have to start getting creative - and that's exactly what you want.

You may well find that ideas will start flooding into your head - I usually do. Even if you get just one idea, keep going. Ask yourself a few questions about the ideas you get:

• Do you like or dislike this idea? Why?
• Will this idea work? Do I need to change anything elsewhere in the story in order for it to work?
• If it won't work, what are the problems with it? Can I, or my character, solve them?
• Are the things I thought I knew about this character/situation actually correct?
• Should I ditch this character/scene completely?
• If I use this idea, how does it affect other characters/the story as a whole?
• If I can't use this idea in this story, is there potential in it for a completely new story?

You may well find that the solution you hoped for will came to you, or you'll know that character so much better. What you came up with will still need work - but it's a start. You've got something to play with. You can now go back to your original notebook/computer file, and begin!

You might even find that the process triggers a completely new direction for your story or even a totally new story. You may discover connections between characters that you weren't aware of before; that a character has a hobby or a previous job you didn't know about.

If you don't believe me, here's an example from my experience.

I had a character who, I decided, needed a bigger role in my story. Writing him out wasn't an option for all sorts of complicated reasons I won't go into. So I decided I would write about him for half an hour and see what happened.

When I began, all I knew about this character was:

• He wore a brown cloak
• His superpower was frying any electronic or mechanical device he happened to be next to (great if you're one of a bunch of superheroes trying to take out a baddie in electronic power armour, but a pain and a half if you want to surf the internet. Or drive a car. Or watch TV. Or do absolutely anything in a technological world.)
• He got this power when he was sucked through a wormhole with a bunch of other people, many of whom also got superpowers at the same time.
• He went off on his own a lot, presumably so that his companions could use their computer.
• He came from a land which was not very technologically advanced.
• I didn't even know his name.

After half an hour, I not only knew loads more about him, but realised that some of the things I thought I'd known about him were wrong.

He doesn't come from a place with no technology. He comes from a place which is highly dependent on it. There's more conflict that way. Much more story potential.

He didn't get the power by going through the wormhole with the others. He already had it. Which means he must have travelled through another wormhole on an earlier occasion - and made it back again. There's a whole other story there - how did he stumble upon another wormhole? What happened to him while he was on the other side of it? How did he get back?

I started answering these questions. His hobby is caving. The other wormhole is deep underground - he finds it by accident and thinks, when he goes through, that it's just a passage to another cave. He comes back - what adventures he has through the wormhole I don't know yet - but he's acquired this pain of a superpower.

He goes back to work. Here's a problem with the idea. He must be working within walking distance of the caves as if he tried to travel anywhere by train, plane or automobile, with his new superpower, he'd get nowhere. However, it made me think about which part of the imaginary universe he lives in - where might there be caves and workplaces within walking distance of each other? Right. Now I know which part of this universe he comes from.

He is a heart surgeon, not a mere peasant from a pre-industrial society as I originally thought. He was inspired to become a heart surgeon because he has a sister with a congenital heart condition and he wanted to be like the doctors who saved her life and fitted her with a pacemaker. 

As soon as he walks into the hospital where he works, all the power goes out and the instruments stop working. Patients die. Engineers are rushed in to fix the problem and my character is sent home, because he can't do his job while there is no power.

When he gets home, his sister comes running up to greet him and immediately drops dead because her pacemaker stops working. He's accused of killing her and goes on the run, and soon realises that it's he who is causing all the outages. He did kill his sister, although he didn't mean to. Luckily, he has not managed to reach his girlfriend across town - since she has a pacemaker as well and if he goes near her, she'll die, too. (We're not supposed to make life easy for our poor characters, after all).

His only option is to go and live on a remote island: again there is the problem that his power will knock out virtually any transportation system he can use to get there - so he'll have to go by sailboat, and he won't have sat nav or any other system and it will take him months to get there. He'll be so sick of fish by the time that he reaches his destination that he never wants to eat fish again if he doesn't have to - another snippet about him.

There are monasteries on the island he's bound for - he believes the monks might know how he can rid himself of this curse, and if not, well, he can always stay there and become a hermit. He's getting used to being on his own by now.

It is over this island that the main wormhole in the story opens up and that's how come he gets caught up in it along with everyone else.

He and his new friends take up residence in a cave - his caving skills may come in very useful; or at least, his walkabouts aren't necessarily always outside.

All this has made him a rather tortured soul, and he isolates himself from the other characters; they know as little about him as I did, so when he walks in one day and saves the life of another character with his knowledge of heart surgery/medicine, it astonishes everyone.

Wow. I can go away and write (and also re-write) a few chapters on him now. I still don't know what his name is - but I'm sure he'll let me know one of these days, now that we're communicating.

All that from deciding to write about this mysterious character for half an hour - it really does work!

It didn't stop with him, either. The fact that there are more wormholes leading to different times and places has opened up all sorts possibilities for other characters and some potentially interesting time-travel paradoxes. I won't go into details about those - too many spoilers already today - but thanks to this little technique, my novel may evolve into a trilogy!