Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you’ve got.
Writer’s block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at the old typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing pops into your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you do when this happens is what separates you from the one-of-thesedays- I’m-gonna-write-a-book crowd.
To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.
All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.
It is possible to combine a story line and plot line in the same work. Usually the storylines comes first, serving as a background to the plot line, but not always.
The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.
You will never work through writer’s block if you walk away from your typewriter. That will only make it easier to walk away the next time.
It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway, critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works of genius?
For some it is harder to write a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.
When characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.