Combat Writer’s Block with This Technique to Beat the Blank Page

Learn to write stories in a fun and simple way with Natalia Méndez’s creative dice

Overcoming the fear of the blank page has never been easy: thinkers, artists, and writers have been faced with creative block throughout history. Fear of failure, a lack of ideas, or the feeling that nobody will be interested in what you have to say, are among the many sentiments that leave us feeling lost and unable to continue our work.

Editor and teacher of children's literature Natalia Méndez (@natumendez) explains how to combat creative block by creating dice with ideas and concepts inscribed on their faces to inspire new stories.

We explain it step by step below.

Make a list of story elements

Every story has a character, in a certain place and to whom something will happen. The first step is to make a table with three rows separated by categories–character, place, item–in which you must add a minimum of six elements (so that all the faces of the die are covered).

At this point, you should ideally write down more than six options, so that you can then choose from them the ones that best suit you in terms of the production and content of the story.

Here are some examples:

- List of characters: doctor, tennis player, dolphin, grandmother, veterinarian, teacher
- List of items (can be concrete things or things that give you ideas): magnifying glass, spoon, watch, paint, dictionary, rope, book.
- List of places (can be concrete things or things that give you ideas): treehouse, office, theatre, amusement park, palace, school.

After creating this list, choose the elements that you reckon will add the most value for your future story.

Roll the dice with your chosen ideas

To create the three dice, you can download templates from the internet or make them yourself. Each concept will go on one of the faces of the dice, you can draw them–which will be more fun when it comes to making the story–or simply write the word.

Regarding the type of paper, Natalia recommends that it be at least 120 grams so that the die has a certain consistency and does not break right away.

Once you've finished the dice, it's time to throw them and let chance decide who will be the protagonist of your next story and what conflicts they will have to resolve–a conflict doesn't have to be a problem, but something that gives the story purpose and intrigue–and where the whole story will take place.

Natalia teaches this and other narrative techniques for developing children’s stories from start to finish on her Domestika course Narrative Techniques for Children’s Books.

You may also like:

- Introduction to Children’s Illustration, a course by Adolfo Serra
- Illustration and Design of Children’s Books, a course by Carlos Higuera
- Digital Illustration for Children’s Stories, a course by Teresa Martínez
- Creation and Development of Graphic Novels, a course by María Luque