Block Buster

Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block

Puzzling Prompts

Hello, everyone, it’s great to be back, after several months rebuilding a new website and being snowed under with work!

Today’s Tuesday Tip is a quick Block Buster  – a short exercise to either bust your writer’s block, or just a fun writing challenge to practise your skills.

Today’s exercise is a way of both generating a writing prompt and helping you justify the guilt from procrastination.

I’ve said before, that a short writing exercise is often a great way to get your brain in gear and those creative juices flowing, but a blank piece of paper can be a scary prospect.

Instead you need some sort of prompt.

One of my favourite types of prompt is a word or word(s) that need to be incorporated into a short piece of writing.

But how to generate them?

I, like many people, have a daily routine that involves online word puzzles. I justify the time taken as a means of keeping my brain working and enriching my vocabulary (although it should be noted that these games steadfastly use US spellings).

One of my favourites is the word game Wordle – the aim is to deduce a five-letter word by seeing which letters in the answer are present in words that you guess.

Why not use the answer as your writing prompt?

Fancy a bit more challenge?

Quordle follows the same rules as Wordle, but you have to simultaneously guess four words.

Why not set yourself the challenge of incorporating all four words into your short story?

Feeling really confident?

Octordle, as the name suggests involves the guessing of eight words.

Both Quordle and Octordle tend not to be thematic, so the collection of words can be really eclectic.

Worried that you might not know the meaning of a word? The games have links to an online dictionary that provides definitions.

Good luck!

Remember the rules:

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
• It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.

Have fun,

Paul