The Secret to Writer’s Block: Art

All About the Monets: 

Changing Your Perspective Can Help to Break Through Your Writer’s Block

Stories can be written from many different character perspectives.  My personal favorite to both write and to read is the first person point of view.  Essentially, first person is written directly from the mouth of the main character.  This perspective allows you access into a character’s beliefs, thoughts, and desires.  Writing from first person also allows me to fully invest myself in that character as I develop their personalities and discover more about them.  I get to put myself in their shoes and it allows me to write them better.  I also feel that this is one of the best ways to get your audience to care about your character and what happens to them.  

Sometimes, though, I get writer’s block when I try to think of how a main character would react or what they would say in a certain situation.  I also sometimes get so consumed by “thinking” as the lead character that I forget that there are others interacting within the scene as well.  Something that I have found to be helpful is changing my perspective.  I find that if I change my point of view from that of the main character to another character in the scene, that I am better able to think through what my main character would do and say.

I will give you an example of how changing your perspective can change what you see or do.  I used to think that the artwork Water Lilies by Monet was a single painting.  I thought it was a blue and green single masterpiece sitting in a museum somewhere.  Little did I know that Monet actually painted over two hundred and fifty separate works all based on his flower garden at his home in France.  He actually hired people to design and maintain his gardens in order to surround himself with nature.  This is where he found inspiration for his work. 

So how did Monet come up with so many different works of art based on the same single site of inspiration?  The answer is that he would frequently change his perspective of his garden.  He changed what he looked at, how close he was to a plant or object, the time of day, the season, and the flower color scheme.  He even had doors and rooms in his house painted to facilitate different colors and points of view depending on what part of the house he was standing near.  

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Musée de L’Orangerie.  It’s a pretty little museum near the much more well known Louvre Museum in Paris, France.  It is really known for one thing, and that’s the collection of Monet’s work.  It was here that I discovered that Water Lilies was not a single painting at all.  I also discovered how just changing your perspective can produce so many different images of the same thing.  I have included some photos of these artworks here for a little extra inspiration.

So how do you change your perspective in order to break through your writer’s block?  Here are a few ideas to help:

• What if you change where your main character is standing in a scene?  Does changing their viewpoint change what they would say or do?  Would they see something that you didn’t pick up on before?  

• Try putting yourself in another one of your characters’ shoes.  What are they seeing?  What are they thinking?  What is their perception of the main character and their actions?  

• Why not use dialogue from other characters to describe what they are seeing or thinking.  You can use what they are saying to lead into your main character’s motivations and responses.  

• Try writing a scene from the perspective of another character.  I have used this method recently.  I could not figure out how my main character would respond to a certain situation.  Every time I would start a dialogue, I would end up erasing it.  So, instead, I decided to write the scene from the perspective of an ancillary character.  After I had that down, I just had to go back and change the point of view to that of my main character.  The dialogue had already worked itself out.  

Changing your or your protagonist’s perspective may help you to break through and facilitate how your main character would respond and act.  So, the next time that you feel like writer’s block is keeping you from doing right by your main character, try some artistic inspiration instead. 

I hope that these ideas help you to break through! 

Found a great source of inspiration that worked for you?  Let me know!

Still getting writer’s block?  Tell me how I can help!