A Tip for Getting Unstuck

It's Week Two of NaNoWrimo, and I, my daughter, and my niece were all feeling a bit stuck in our novels. So tonight we had a novel-unsticking session.

We sat down at the kitchen table, each with a pile of index cards in our choice of colour. I told the girls to take one card and just write down one thing that they knew was going to happen in their novel before the end, or even at the end. I did the same.

Next I told them to take a second card and write one of the following: something that happened either just before or just after the first thing they wrote, or just another event that would happen sometime before the end of the novel.

We kept up that way, one thing at a time, one card at a time. If someone couldn't think of something, we threw out ideas for each other until something clicked. Our goal was to get ten cards each.

Once we reached that goal of ten cards each, we laid them out in the order we envisioned the events happening in our novels. There was some shuffling about of cards as we considered our options.

Then I told the girls to read their cards in order, and try to think of what events might be needed to fill in or link one card to the next. If something was needed, we filled out extra cards and put them in their places. This actually took the bulk of the time, but we worked quickly. Once we were finally satisfied, we numbered the cards in order and arranged our stacks. Now they're ready for the next writing session. Hopefully it should mean the end of getting stuck. I told the girls that if they still felt stuck after one of the cards, to jump some space in their novel and jump to another card with an event they felt ready to write.

Personally, I'm not much of one for outlining and this may be as in-depth as any outline of mine will ever get. But there's something comforting in having that little stack of cards waiting to prompt me the next time my wheels are spinning.