Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
I didn’t feel like recording this episode. I didn’t feel like writing the script or revising it either.
I’m telling you that to show you some sausage being made. I love feeling inspired. But one of the most useful things I’ve learned is how to begin when that feeling hasn’t shown up.
In my experience, how I feel while making something isn’t a reliable way to judge what I’m making. A few weeks later, I often can’t tell which pages came from a great writing day and which came from a session I didn’t want to start. The pages are still there.
This is my current best approach to writing mood and writing motion: sometimes you don’t need to feel like writing first. You need a way to get from thinking about writing to putting words on the page. I call that opening move a Blood Punch.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
Blood Punch Your Mood, Writers of Fiction | ep 009
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When I say go, go
My daughter once asked me to swim with her in a cold pool. We live in Florida, and this was around February or March. Because I’m wrapped around her finger, I said yes. But we had to jump in together.
Once she’s in, she’s a polar bear. That first jump is the hard part.
She stood at the edge, thinking about how cold it would be. She stepped forward, then back. She counted down. “No takesie backsies.” Then she still didn’t jump.
Finally, I asked whether she was definitely going swimming that day. She said yes. So she’d made the decision. What she needed next was to get to a place where, when she said go, she went.
That’s the distinction. I’m not talking about acting impulsively or doing something you shouldn’t do. I’m talking about acting on a decision you’ve already made.
Writing has its own edge of the pool. You’ve decided to write, but you can keep standing there thinking about the character name you haven’t chosen, the plot you aren’t sure of, or how little you feel like doing it.
Those questions can keep you outside the work. Starting gives you a chance to deal with them while you’re doing it.
You don’t have to wait for the mood
I don’t mean that you should simply muscle through everything. The difficulty I’m talking about here is getting started, especially when no one is waiting for the work and nothing happens if you choose to do something else.
For me, action often changes the mood. As I recorded this episode, I got more into it than I would have by sitting there thinking about recording.
The first moment can still be uncomfortable. Jumping into the pool doesn’t make the water warm. But being in the water is a different situation from standing beside it, imagining the cold.
You can try the same shift with writing. You don’t need to settle every question before you begin. You need enough of a starting point to put something down.
What’s a Blood Punch?
In Doom Eternal, Blood Punch is a powerful melee ability. I borrow that image for a rough, decisive start at the page.
It isn’t elegant. It isn’t fully planned. It’s a big swing.
That might mean writing whatever comes to mind. It might mean taking one simple thought you had earlier and following it. Or it might mean writing to yourself about what you want the scene to do.
You’re trying to cross that invisible barrier between “I’m not writing” and “I’m writing.” The words don’t have to look like finished fiction yet.
Writing to yourself still counts
For one scene, I knew I wanted to begin at the Battle of the Somme. I didn’t know exactly when. I wanted soldiers in the trenches, a slice of trench life, and then the whistles before they went over the walls.
That was enough to start writing about the scene. I got a paragraph down, tweaked it, and suddenly I was refining something instead of thinking about writing and not feeling like it.
I’d still need to return for more realistic historical details. I might divide things up or add characters. Starting rough didn’t remove those jobs. It gave me something to do them with.
If you don’t have story prose yet, write what you’re trying to make happen. You can put the question on the page instead of needing the answer in your head first.
The page makes the idea more specific
There’s something different about putting words down. For me, it can feel like my mind cracks open like the Technodrome and ideas I didn’t know were there come spilling out.
I don’t have a researched explanation of the psychology. What I can describe is the experience: a vague thought has to become something more specific when I write it.
A character has to do something. A place needs a detail. One choice gives me another choice to make.
I might keep those details, change them or cut them. But now I have a detail to beat. I can compare another version with something that exists instead of chasing a thought cloud that keeps changing.
Even a draft I never use can help me discover what the idea needs.
Thinking matters. So does making something.
Thinking is a big part of our job. Sometimes it’s some of the hardest work. This isn’t an argument against planning.
But there’s a loop I want you to watch for: you get an idea, enjoy thinking about it, tell people about it, and let it ripen in your head like brain fungus. Then you move on to the next idea and do the same thing again.
If none of them gets written, the details and excitement can fade. You may not remember the idea as well as you expected. And no one else gets to experience the story that stayed in your head.
A rough draft can get better. You can change what you’ve made. The Blood Punch gives you a way to make that first bit exist without asking it to be great already.
Try an eleven-minute Blood Punch
Why eleven minutes? Fifteen sounds too round. Ten -- I don’t know, I don’t like it. Eleven is weird enough to get your attention. There’s no magic in the number.
Here’s the situation:
A young apprentice swears to her dying dragon that she’ll guard its final ember until dawn, which is an hour away. When the dragon’s last breath fades and the night thins toward the morning, the ember begins to cool in the apprentice’s hands and it’s about to go out.
What does she do?
Set aside eleven minutes and begin.
- Write what happens. It can be a scene, a few details or a rough bit of story.
- If you don’t know what happens, write questions. Put the things you’re wondering about into words.
- If you don’t know the questions, write how the situation makes you feel. You still have somewhere to begin.
Those are options. You don’t need to work through them in order, hit a word count or finish a polished scene.
I’ve given you enough to get past thinking about the cold pool. You know the situation. You don’t know everything you’ll write, and that’s part of the exercise.
When you say go, go.
Keep the next step useful
If preparation keeps replacing the work itself, Fiction Writing Free Dive… or Die looks more closely at that trap.
Once you’ve started, missing names or details can stop you again. Fiction Writer Help: 2 Keys on the Keyboard that Build a Bridge gives you a way to leave a placeholder and keep the draft moving.
For now, you’ve got the prompt. Try the rough start and see what happens when the idea has to become words.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.