Blocked

                Many good writing books will help you develop your craft. Everything from Plot to Structure, Developing Characters; there are the infamous Dummy books, Writing for Dummies. Grammar for Dummies, come to mind as two popular books for writers. They can’t come close to Dr. Lou Willett Stanek, her book So You Want to Write a Novel. Published in 1994, Stanek offers up witty advice, antidotes, along with various prompts. Some of her suggestions include Thinking Like A Writer, in that section of the book she offers up a section of exercises that include What If questions.

•         What if your character has a dream? She is dead and is waiting in a long lin, When she reaches the front, admissions angel says “Do you want to be reborn? You have three minutes to decide” Write her thoughts.
•          What if she has to hear or say “You’re fired”
•          What if your character says, “Recapturing one’s innocence is impossible?”

Writers block can happen at any point in time. The overwhelming feeling when you look at the blank screen and feel the panic of not knowing what comes next. Prompts like these can help a novelist overcome writers block. The book is broken into 11 chapters with an introduction and followed by three pages of extra exercises.

You do not have to work through the book chapter by chapter. Although an initial reading should help you get started. After that initial reading if, you want to bookmark the exercises and work through them when you are overwhelmed by writers block. 

There are other sources for writing prompts on the web, among these Writers Digest Online lists prompts for different kinds of writing, from Non-Fiction to Novel length works.  There is also a Prompt Generator that offers up writing prompts to help combat writers block.