Have you ever reached a point in your story where your characters stop talking to you, the plot stalls, and you’re banging your head against the keyboard trying to figure out how to fix the problem? You try to push through it, sketching out the plot points or letting your mind wander while you clean the house. But nothing works. This happened while I was writing my first Harlequin historical, Engagement of Convenience. So, what do you do after your bathroom is sparkling and you still haven’t come to a solution? Kill a character. Or, if that isn’t practical for your story, burn something important to the ground. It sounds violent, and it is, and that’s the point. A death puts pressure on your hero and heroine, compelling them to act, and character action is what drives the story. Depending on who dies, your hero or heroine may be motivated to seek revenge, to solve a mystery, to help others deal with the tragedy, or to hide the body. The course of action your characters choose will be influenced by their ultimate goals, but forcing them to make a decision will push them and the story in a new direction. A dead body is also a great opportunity for conflict. Based on the hero and heroine’s goals, the hero may want to hide the body, while the heroine might want to call the police. This clash will create tension between them that you can use throughout the rest of the story. Also, a stiff in the story will put external pressure on the hero and heroine from either the authorities or the villain. A friend of mine who writes paranormal romance likes this method, and often uses it when she is stuck. Her paranormal characters are trying to evade detection, so when they’re caught with a dead body, it creates all kinds of problems for them to deal with. Death can be a powerful tool for characterization. How a hero or heroine reacts to a death will reveal who they are, and will indicate whether or not you need to do more character development. If your hero simply steps over his friend’s dead body, or doesn’t take much time to mourn, you may need to reexamine your hero to understand why he’s so callous. Or, if it’s appropriate to the story, the hero’s callous reaction can be used to illustrate his growth. If your hero reacts with more emotion to a death later in the story, then it will show how much he has grown and changed. If killing characters isn’t your thing, or doesn’t work for your book, then burn something down. A big fire in your story will push you out of your comfort zone, and make you take a hard look at whether or not your carefully created plot is actually working. As writers, it’s easy to fall in love with our plots. After all, we’ve worked hard on them and they seem so neat and tidy on spreadsheets or note cards. However, once we start writing, our characters don’t always follow the path we’ve laid out for them, or, if you’re a pantser like me, they stop telling you where they want to go. As a result, you may spend precious time writing scenes you’ll probably end up cutting as you try to force your characters in a certain direction. Instead of forcing things to work, try lighting a fire under your characters, literally, and shocking them and you into in an entirely new direction. I once had a historical heroine whose story got stuck in her colonial house. I wrote scene after scene with her in this house, hiding the hero from the villain, helping the hero recover from a gunshot wound, and in the end boring myself to death. I didn’t know how to get the story moving. Then I realized that the house had become a crutch for both the character and me. As a result, I decided to burn her house down. The emotional and physical repercussions of suddenly finding my heroine homeless got her story and my creativity moving. An author friend of mine who writes romantic suspense finds burning things down, or blowing things up, to be very helpful for getting her hero and heroine on the move. Like a dead body, a fire can increases the stakes, provide conflict and move the plot forward. If these suggestions seem too violent, or you aren’t ready to commit murder or arson, then maybe just the threat of death or fire is all you need to spark your creativity. For instance, there’s nothing like the drama of an approaching army or the suspense of a crazy killer chasing the heroine to put pressure on your characters and motivate them to act. Just make sure that whatever drama you choose is intense, so that it ups the stakes for your hero or heroine and keeps the reader hooked. For me, the threat of burning down the heroine's precious house in Engagement of Convenience was enough to get her story moving after a big block. Choosing to kill a character or burn something down is up to you, and isn’t always the right option for every story. However, the next time your WIP hits a sticking point, like my novel Engagement of Convenience did, I challenge you to step out of the comfort zone of your preconceived plot and consider the more dramatic options. By doing something powerful and unexpected in your story, you’ll create conflict, character growth and, on another level, author development. Surprising yourself and your characters with a traumatic event might be just the thing to snap you out of your writer’s block, and get you successfully to “The End.” Check out Engagement of Convenience to see how this story turned out or read one of my other novels because I sometimes struggled with plots on those too. www.Georgie-Lee.com

Need some blog inspo? If writer's block is hitting you hard, try one of these 30 blog ideas for when you're feeling stuck! Read the article at gretchenreese.com

All writers struggle with inspiration and with writing at some point. Knowing what inspires you and your writing is a great way to rediscover your creativity when you’re feeling stuck. Here are 4 ways that may help you reconnect with your creativity and get inspired to write.

If you want to know how to write a book with no experience, this post shows you exactly how to get started writing. Yes, even without a degree.

JJ Barnes published a post on Ko-fi

Bland. Soulless. Generic. Robotic. Totally and undeniably fake. The last thing you want is to have someone waste your time with impersonal mass-marketing emails or messages. It’s bad enough having them fill up your inbox. It’s even worse when they’re not even proofread! If you don’t care enough to at least glance over your message before hitting [SEND], why should we care about what you’re offering?

You probably already know how much we love reading books, dear Pandas. However, there’s a lot of beauty, wisdom, and wit to be found on the internet, too—you just need to know where to look. Tumblr, for instance, can be a wonderful inspiration for all kinds of writers, no matter the genre.

The writing process can seem daunting if you're just finding out how to start writing a novel. Here are some tips and resources from my own writing process.

Job hunting is one of the toughest jobs there is. It requires both skill and luck, with an infinite amount of positive attitude which keeps you going through piles of motivation letters and hours of interviews.

A woman (23) asked if she was wrong to be upset when her husband-to-be (35) decided to cancel their honeymoon to Paris so he could fund a monster truck with “the boys.”

Things you need to include in chapter one of your book to keep your readers hooked so they want to keep reading your story.

Struggling to figure out how your novel should end? Have a look at these 5 ways to end your novel and see if any of them resonate with your story.

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books in lots of weird genres like fantasy (Blood of Kings and Kinsman Chronicles), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). She has a podcast/vlog at www.StoryworldFirst.com. You can also find Jill on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website. Tagboth (Tag for short) is a goldhorn dragon from Belfaylinn, a hidden fantasy realm on the western end of the Sargasso Sea. Jill is working on the first book of this tale for this year's Grow an Author series. There is one question I have been hearing a lot lately either in emails or in person, and it's some variation of "What do I do when I'm stuck after only a few chapters?" That's a hard question to answer without knowing more about your story, so here is a list of ideas to help. This summary comes from this week's Storyworld Shorts video, which you can watch by clicking here. 1. If you've never written a novel, you might try to complete shorter stories first. Once you get good at shorter stories, you could work on writing some longer ones. 2. Ask yourself some questions: -"Who is my main character?" Make sure you have a clear main character that the reader can root for. -"What does my main character (my hero) want?" You need to know what your main character wants in the story to be able to know how he will behave in each scene. -"What is the story question (story goal)?" Your main character needs to have a goal that will last until the story is done. Frodo making the decision to hold onto the One Ring isn't "story goal" enough. It's when he decides to carry the ring all the way to Mount Doom to destroy it that we have a strong story goal. It's important to define the story goal early on so your readers know what to root for as they read. -"What are the stakes?" What happens if your hero fails to achieve the story goal? It needs to be something worse than getting a failing grade in a class. You don't have to put the fate of the world at risk, but do keep in mind that the higher the stakes, the more invested your reader becomes. 3. Examine (and strengthen) your plot structure. If could be that taking a look at your plot structure will help you see where you have plot holes. 4. Get to know your character better. You can't write much about a person you don't know very well. Dig deeper into your hero's backstory. Create parents, siblings, friends, a boss, habits, likes and dislikes, lies he believes . . . make sure you come up with all the ingredients you need to create a character who feels read to your reader. 5. Spend more time building your storyworld. If you're writing fantasy or science fiction, sometimes you can get stuck when you don't know enough about your world. Depending on your plot, you might need to spend some more time brainstorming a certain storyworld element, like: government, history, weapons, magic, culture, creatures, etc. 6. Use Try/Fail cycles to keep things moving. Try/Fail cycles can help you get un-stuck by answering a simple question in one of two ways. First, define what your character wants. Then ask whether or not he will succeed? The answer is one of these two: "Yes, but . . ." or "No, and . . ." For example: My character wakes up late. Will he make it to school in time? Yes, but he misses the bus and has to walk. OR No, and he locked himself out of the house, so now he's stuck outside. You can continue this cycle by again asking what he wants, then answering the question of will he succeed with the "Yes, but . . ." or "No, and . . ." replies. 7. Try Stephanie's index card trick in which you make three stacks of cards, one with character names, one with settings, and one with plot situations. Then shuffle and draw one of each until the combination sparks an idea for a new scene. I hope these ideas help you find a way past where you're stuck and get you back into the story. Did I miss anything? What do you do when you're stuck? Share in the comments.

100 blog post ideas and how to get through a writer's block. Ten ways to get re-inspired as a blogger when you have lost your motivation.