What’s Your Biggest Fear When Writing a Novel?

A blank page—a fear to rival claustrophobia

If you are a novelist who finds the blank page a teensy bit terrifying, you are not alone.

I think I would rather go to the dentist than stare at a blank page of a new novel.

Heck, I’d rather get a shot in my big toe than face that horrible cursor blink, blink, blink at me on a blank page.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a new middle grade mystery. I’ve figured out the big picture stuff—like who’s doing what to whom and why and who figures it all out and how they figure it out. I’ve also explored my characters through interviews and understand them quite well.

I was really hoping that all of this story planning would make that fear of a blank page evaporate.

No. Such. Luck.

Effective story planning doesn’t automatically translate to knowing what an individual scene should look like.

So I dug out my copy of Lisa Cron’s Story Genius. She approaches story planning at the scene level. I’ve used her approach before on a completely different novel. Time to try it again.

Here’s what a blank scene card looks like. It’s on page 150 of Story Genius by Lisa Cron.

She explains how to fill it out in the following 2+ pages. If you don’t have this book in your writing craft library, I highly suggest it.

Is filling out yet another planning document a way to avoid the blank page?

Maybe.

But filling out one scene card has helped me think through what needs to be in the next few pages of my novel.

That knowledge was enough to get me to face that blank page.

It was still frightening, but I did it anyway.

So can you!