by Kasey Sailer

Created on: October 12, 2010

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, once said, “One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph.  I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily.” 

How many of us have found difficulty in the first sentence, let alone the first paragraph.  Finding ourselves stuck staring at a blank page not knowing what to write.  This is a common setback that happens to every writer.  However, there is no need to give into the desperation and start pulling out your hair.  There are many things you can try to break through this block.  One of the most effective ways is by using writing prompts.

Next time you find yourself staring at a blank screen in disgust go over to your bookcase, grab a book, and open it to a random page.  Now take the first sentence that your eyes fall upon and make that the first sentence of your story.  Use that sentence as a jumping off point, and allow yourself to write whatever situation that sentence transports you to.  The important thing right now is to get you writing again.

I have found this method strangely appealing and sometimes it even becomes a challenge.  There are many fun ways this can be executed.  I have asked friends and family members to pick out any sentence and I will write a story from it.  This has resulted in some very challenging and strange sentences such as; She sits naked on a rock, a few yards out in the pond.  Along with fellow writers, I have also turned this into a contest.  We will find a challenging sentence and see who can write the best story.  This makes for an entertaining way to conquer writer’s block.  However, this method feels strange at first and may be as daunting to some of you as a blank page.

Now I’d like to bring up how Ray Bradbury was able to come up with story ideas and avoid writer’s block.  In his book, “Zen in the Art of Writing” he discussed how he started making lists of titles by putting down long lists of nouns.  His list ran something like this:

THE TRAP DOOR.  THE NIGHT TRAIN.  THE FOG HORN.  THE MIRROR MAZE.  THE TOY CHEST.  THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.

As he wrote this list he began to remember things like his fear and love of the circus and carnival when he was a kid.  He would recall these memories and understand how he could craft stories from these experiences.  He would simply begin by writing about these memories and experiences and he says that they would eventually turn into stories all by themselves. 

Bradbury began picking up steam and found out he was learning from his lists of nouns.  He was learning to let his characters do the work for him.  He found by putting characters into certain situations and discovering how they react would help create the stories for him.  This option may not work for you, but you will never know unless you try.

Of course, there are always the standard writing prompts that you could try.  They are floating all over the web and entire books are dedicated to nothing but.  I won’t go into great detail about this method as you can type writing prompts into any search engine and find thousands of them.  My goal was to mainly give you some alternate methods of different types of writing prompts that you may never have heard of.  Hopefully you won’t be seated in front of a blank screen for much longer and burst through that invisible wall that is writer’s block.

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