Overcoming Writer's Block: Conversations That Help Students Overcome Creative Hurdles

In response to the issue of writer’s block, Maya Angelou mused: "Nothing will work unless you do".

Unfortunately, this call to action may not prompt flurries of creativity and inspired prose from adolescent English students.? Students can, however, return to a better state of writing flow and motivation to continue, if their teacher engages them in a conversation relating to common solutions for writer’s block, such as the three outlined below:

1. Encourage them to reflect on their purpose and rewrite their plan

Often students, “don’t know what to write next,” if they don’t have a clear sense of purpose. Ask your students what they would really like their reader to feel, think or do after reading their piece.? Similarly, you can ask students, “what do you want to gain from writing this piece,” especially if it is more reflective or autobiographical in style.? Following a conversation about these questions, encourage your students to rewrite a dot-point plan for their text, so that they have a clearer road-map of where they are going and importantly, what they want to achieve.

2. Identify a structure that suits their text type and remind them of the nonlinear nature of writing.

If students are suffering from writer’s block, it might also be due to a weak understanding of how their specific text type should and can be structured.? Providing students with typical structures for different forms of writing such as the traditional orientation-complication-climax-resolution for narratives, alternating cause and effect paragraphs for explanatory pieces, the describe-interpret-evaluate-plan for reflective writing or the alternative reflective essay structure illustrated below.? Learning about structure for different text types provides a real “aha” moment for students, which also often requires them to return to a more careful plan, instead of continuing on from where they left off. If the student needs to return to the planning stage, using their identified structure, it is also effective to remind them of the importance of seeing quality writing as a non-linear process, involving many deletions and reversals of ideas.

3. Ensure they have a powerful complication that ties with a clear sense of resolution

Students writing a narrative often neglect the most critical part - its complication. This is often due to an event being confused with a complication.? To arrest this scenario, ask the student what is causing conflict in their story and what is actually driving their reader to keep reading.? Explain to them that a conflict can’t be, for example, “a lost passport.”? It has to be a conflict in relation to the event such as, “a lost passport and lying about it.”? To support students to develop an interesting complication, ask them whether their protagonist is experiencing an interpersonal or intrapersonal conflict, or a battle with the external environment.? Then ask them how they think this conflict should or could be resolved.? Students love these conversations about compilation, protagonist and resolution, as it gives them further creative freedom to consider and experiment with the moral compass of their protagonist and physical setting of their narrative.

Resolving writer’s block with students through discussing and troubleshooting what is at the core of it, provides many rewards for both the student and teacher. A solution-oriented approach to writer’s block extends student knowledge about the building blocks of quality writing, reinforces the importance of an open mindset with respect to writing and strengthens the student-teacher relationship, as the teacher’s answer to the problem posed is more empowering than the traditional advice to just keep writing more and working harder.

Do you have a critical question to ask of students to help them move beyond their writer’s block?