What about characters. Is it always the same set, but with different names? Is the hero loosely--and I mean loosely--always based on you?

What do you do if your well dries up and you are churning out cliche after cliche? How do you get back to the good stuff.

I only ask because I went through a dry patch for a few months. I had no ideas that really inspired me to write--so I didn't. It's gone now, and I have loads of ideas--too many to write. So mostly I am making notes and trying to identify the voice of the piece etc. before getting back to WIP.

I fear it, though. The day the stories die...and she was singin' bye, bye...

Ideas are out there for the taking. All the time. Everywhere.

It takes, on our part, a considerable amount of self-training and discipline to keep our idea generator cranking away.

If you haven't, read OSC's Character and Viewpoint. In it he outlines his 1000 Ideas exercise.

At boot camp he also gave us an idea generating assignment. We had to generate five story ideas in a couple of hours. We were to get at least one from a stranger interview, a couple from media, a couple from observations of what was around us.

Liberty Hall's flash triggers are another great idea. Expand on that for your own use. Pick up the dictionary and let it fall open. Read a word and the entire definition for it.

I also subscribe to a word-a-day email newsletter. Some fascinating words have come my way through that newsletter--many of which could make for the beginnings of one heck of a story.

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How many stories do you have in you?

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How many? Short or long? I find--frequenting Liberty Hall--that anything can trigger an idea for a flash/short story, so I guess this is limitless--so far.

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Ever ran out?

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Did you panic?

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How did you get over it?

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What about characters[?] Is it always the same set, but with different names?

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No. Certain types of protagonists always come to mind, but I try to make them all different.

Depending on the setting, names are hard. Fantasy names are easy (for me) because I can just create them. Depending on the type of tale, I can use meanings to determine the names. But, in a present day milieu, I don't want to just use Tom, Dick, Bob, Harry, Sue, Jane, Jennifer, Natasha, or anything common. But, I don't want to use something I have to keep looking at to make sure the spelling is right.

PS - I, and many other guys, like Jack, but, sadly this is too common, also.

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Is the hero loosely--and I mean loosely--always based on you?

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Uh, yes and no. There's a part of me in every character. How could there not be and still immerse? You cannot write how someone alse would react, only how you could or could not--so each is the framework of every character.

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What do you do if your well dries up and you are churning out cliche after cliche? How do you get back to the good stuff[?]

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I'll let you know when I write something good and not cliche.

I don't know that we have a finite limit of stories in us. We can write as many or as few stories as we wish, and ideas are just a quick meditation away. If I feel like I don' have any ideas, I'll do something non-writing related--go talk to someone (gasp!), go exercise, cook, anything, and usually something comes up. Reading sparks ideas for me, too.

At one point, just as I was working on draft two of my WIP and starting another project, I was struck with a cold sweat because I was so sure that the same characters were popping up in my stories, over and over again. But I realized they were superficial similarities, and as soon as I delved deep into their pasts and psyches, they were fundamentally different. They are all based on me, to a certain extent--I don't know if one can get beyond that. But it's kind of like playing "what if" with yourself. I get angry, sure, but what if I were a really angry person? What would I do in this situation? etc.

With another book I could never get past the second chapter, until I added a new character who made the interactions between my original characters much more interesting (yes it was a female, all the most interesting characters tend to be female, especially in Shakespeare).

With a third book I killed the original main character (who was based probably too much on me) just before the start of the book and made my secondary, much more interesting characters, the main players.

Also another thing I have done to make a book work is merge ideas or characters (something OSC has talked about on this site I believe) from a number of unsuccessful books to make a more interesting or detailed world. In one case I had a number of noble families squabbling, but something was missing, then I took the royal family from another book I was getting no where, and made them the royal family of the kingdom I already had from the other book, and the two stories easily complimented each other.

Therefore my humble advice when stuck is 'nothing is sacred'.

Let me clarify. I have no intention of becoming a writer, by career. I'm a scientist. An astrophysicist. But I do love fantasy, and I've been tinkering with a fantasy world since I was in high school. I've written a novel that I'm now shopping to attract agents, and I'm mostly done with the sequel. This world and these characters mean a lot to me, and regardless of whether the story is, in the end, published, is really a side point to me. It would be an added bonus, and I'm willing to go through the effort to do everything I can to get them published.

I don't think I would be willing to do that with other story ideas that pop into my mind.

Then again, for all I know, once I finally end the overarching story of this series (which I'm envisioning at 4 books, now, with most of the rough outline of book 3 already taking shape in my head) the writing bug inside me won't die away, and I'll write in other worlds / genres, etc. But for now, for me, there is only 1 story I care about writing. Even if I hear back from every agent/editor/publisher in existence saying "book 1 is crap, so don't work on any sequels" the story will be written, because I can't NOT finish it.

So far, I have several folders filled with notes for projects that I eventually want to work on. Some of it is stuff I'll likely never have the chance to use, but I keep it indexed just in case. If that anime production company does ever give me a call and say, "Hey, we like your work, but we aren't interesting in vampires. Can you do something with Super Robots?" I'll be ready.

Q: Ever ran out? Did you panic? How did you get over it?

A: Not really.

Q: What about characters. Is it always the same set, but with different names? Is the hero loosely--and I mean loosely--always based on you?

A: I think that all of an authors characters come from somewhere within. Even if that piece of themselves is a tiny dark sliver magnified and twisted until it is unrecognizable.

Q: What do you do if your well dries up and you are churning out cliche after cliche? How do you get back to the good stuff.

A: If my stuff has started to feel a bit lacklucster to me, I swap genres, or if I'm on a deadline, I push through it until I get back to the good stuff and then delete/rewrite the stuff that isn't up to par.

Female characters give me the hardest time; I'm worried that I might stereotype them...but they end up being qualities I'd like in a girl so...

I have a bunch of semi started stories; I get weird intros or scenes, type them in my phone and go on. I usually come back and revisit them, if only to expand a little and leave them alone again.

I have no idea how many stories I have in me. I'm busy working on a series of novels starring the same characters (it's at least a trilogy - so far). On breaks from that, I've done some fanfiction (that's how I got my fiction-writing muscles loosened up again after years of not writing, and I have a nice, big fan base I like to keep happy so they'll BUY MY NOVELS! ). I'll also write other stuff, like PR stuff for my art biz, short stories with totally different characters and "feel" than my novels, etc. I also take breaks by sculpting (my main business, truth be told), riding my horse, taking days off to hang out with my friends, etc. Whatever I do feeds my creativity in one way or another. Any experiences I have, people I meet, things I see, hear or read, all rumble around in the back of my mind and may pop up in a story at some time.

I've been doing creative work of some kind all my life, and I've learned that sometimes you just have to give yourself permission to take breaks (anything from an hour off to a ten-day vacation!) from what you normally do. You also have to give yourself permission to experiment and perhaps screw up - you can learn a lot from your mistakes if you just pay attention and give yourself permission to make those mistakes.

2. What about characters. Is it always the same set, but with different names? Is the hero loosely--and I mean loosely--always based on you?<<

Heavens, no! I'm a rather sedate, all-too-sedentary, too-cuddly sliding-into-late-middle-aged woman who would be a rather boring character under a lot of circumstances. My heroes are usually young men, intelligent, a bit shy (sometimes) or else they're charming - or both - and people who've read my stuff without knowing who I am think I'm a man, the way I write my guys, my battles, and my lovely young ladies. I also have quite a few guys who wish my female characters were real so they could date and/or marry them! I was never a "cute, popular, charming" girl, yet somehow I can write girls/women with tremendous charm and appeal. I'm pleased with who I am NOW, but these young folks are who I wish I'd been way back when, or, more often, people I'd LOVE to be friends with, but I'm probably not the kind of person they'd actually hang out with (although they'd be nice to me, because they're nice people). And no, my characters are definitely not the same (except when the next book is part of the series where their characters continue, but they're still not the "same" - their characters mature and change as they progress through the books), nor are they *me.* And they do have flaws - perfect people are simply boring.

I base my characters on various aspects of people I know or have observed (sometimes actors, public personalities, that kind of thing, for variety's sake). I also do psychological research to make certain that something that's way different than my own experience is ACCURATE. Accuracy in character is very important to me, so I consult with someone with a psychology degree about my villains, in particular, but sometimes about my good guys as well.

3. What do you do if your well dries up and you are churning out cliche after cliche? How do you get back to the good stuff.<<

Take a break. Do something COMPLETELY different. Go out and mingle with real, live people. Get involved in a group of real people and observe them. Sit in a mall and people-watch. Go on a bus tour and make up stories in your head about the other passengers as you observe or get to know them. Get some exercise, both physical and mental. Write in a completely different style or genre or character type (my latest is almost a "chick lit" story, still a fantasy, but with a sassy single young woman as the lead, when I nearly always have guys as the leads in my stories and novels - doing this story is a SERIOUS change from my norm, hard to do and yet great fun, and a real challenge to try writing comedy more than action and drama). My "chick lit fantasy" is making me laugh out loud so far, so it's off to a good start! Now if I can just work out where it's going . . . (the joys of being a seat-of-the-pants writer!). Don't be afraid to write outside your "comfort zone" - experimenting is great fun and very helpful to broadening your writing horizons!

BTW - if your characters are all "you," you need to "re-cast" your story. Watch some TV or movies and find an actor or actress whose personality (or whose character's personality) seems to suit each main character you're trying to write, if you don't know enough "interesting" people to help you with characterization. Use your perception of the personality and character of the actor/character/public person you've chosen to help you work out how your own character would react to different things, and you may find a different way of writing your characters. I don't mean you should copy a TV or movie character. I mean you should try taking some aspects of that person's personality (either the actor's or the character's) and put it in your story's circumstances. Perhaps having a "real" face to think of when you think of your character will help you see them acting out the story in your head more clearly than you're able to do now. I do that for some characters and find it to be quite helpful at times - and if I didn't tell you who I based the character on, I seriously doubt you'd recognize that person, because I only use *parts* of that character/actor, not the "whole" (mostly because I don't really know them!!), and then add my own ideas to that person's personality, looks, emotions, etc. Heehee, probably even if I told you who I used, you wouldn't recognize them. Weaving different parts of various people's personalities into a new character is part of the fun of writing for me.

Hope this helps.

Lynda