Here’s a third suggestion for coping for writer’s block — part of a four-part discussion.

Describe the setting or action from the point of view of one of the characters, not necessarily the one whose point of view is represented in the scene under construction. Example:

Ottavio Ombertín had never seen so many tents as filled the glen where the raiding bands were based. Shoved along by the Hengliss man, he passed several tunnel-like affairs covered in hide and canvas. Here and there stood smaller dome-shaped shelters, six or eight feet across. Horses grazed complacently, hobbled or penned inside a circle of parked wagons. A few men lounged or puttered near smoldering campfires. Some greeted the Hengliss with calls that sounded like musta qué or ku’na. Pine needles sighed. A pair of jays commented on their passage. Somewhere far off young voices shouted and bantered as a group of friends threw a ball around a makeshift ha-lo court.

Tavio scarcely noticed these things. It didn’t occur to him to remark on the gathering of tents. He no longer registered much, except for the screaming.

They stopped before one of the domes. The Englo said it was his lodge and sat Tavio down on a flat rock near the fire ring, which flanked a second lodge nearby.

Then the man turned away, picked up a pot, filled it from a bucket, and hung it off an iron hook staked over the fire. From a canvas sack, he pulled a couple fistfuls of grain, which he sifted through his fingers into the heating water.

None of this, either, was observed very closely by Tavio. He huddled on the stone, his eyes cast down. He saw that his right foot was bleeding, but oddly, he felt no pain. He put his hands over his ears to block out the sound of the screams. Yet when he did, he could still hear them, Tisha especially, her voice shrilling a note he had never heard before and then shrieking for her mama. A shadow fell across the ground. The Hengliss was standing over him.

You may never use this material. Or you may use some of it, either whole cloth or much massaged. But it will give you some insight into or purchase on what’s going on, and that may be all you need to put your Jeep back in gear.

Have you written passages that you never used in your fiction, for the sole purpose of clarifying characterization, setting, backstory, or the like? How did it work for you?

Writer’s Block, Part 1
Writer’s Block, Part 2