Found a weird trick for getting unstuck on a scene that actually worked for me

I was writing a fantasy story about a guy who finds a door in his basement that leads to a different season every time he opens it (which I thought was pretty clever, honestly). But I got totally stuck around chapter 4 where he's supposed to make a big choice and I had no clue what he'd do. I tried outlining, I tried freewriting, I even tried just skipping ahead and coming back later. Nothing clicked for like 3 weeks. Then I grabbed a random prompt from this sub about writing a scene where the character has to trade something precious for information. I plugged that into my story's situation and it unlocked the whole rest of the plot in one sitting. Has anyone else used random prompts like that to break a block, or do you have a go-to method that works better?

2 comments

2 Comments

alicecooper1mo ago

Oh damn, that's actually brilliant.

kelly_miller801mo ago

Did your friend @alicecooper see that guy who rigged a car stereo to his skateboard?