THINKing

Top 10 Story Starter Tips For Blocked Bloggers

Are you blogged out? Got writer’s block big time. So big even my previous post on writer’s block didn’t help? Never fear, your doctor of creativity is here. I have some big time block busters.

Mash-Up. One of my favorites is to take a subject that so clearly has nothing to do with another subject and meld them into a question. For instance, “what can we learn about social media from crocodiles?” I have no idea but it makes you think about the topic differently.

Divide And Conquer. If you are tackling a topic, it may just be too big to take on in one post. This gives you fodder for several days if you can you divide it into several posts as I did recently in Big Boy Marketing, part 1, part 2, and part 3

Past, Present, Future. Consider your subject matter - in my case marketing communications - from the historic perspective. How did people sell things before mass advertising? How does that relate to what’s happening today and may happen tomorrow?

Picture This. Go to Flickr and take a few moments to look through photos. Write down what the picture is telling you. There’s a story idea in there waiting for you to find it.

Talking Topics. OK, let’s say I’m writing about billboards. How would I feel if I were a billboard? What would I want to tell you about myself?

Merge. Go to three of your favorite blogs or websites. Write down the first headline that catches your eye at each one. Now, try to come up with a single topics using the words from these headlines. Here are three recent headlines from THINKing to get you started. Newspapers: Dig The Grave, Journalists A Twitter, and Get Well Defined.

Natural Disaster. From the following list, select a natural disaster: tornado, hurricane, flood, avalanche, tidal wave, sand storm, thunderstorm. Pose a statement like this: My (topic here) is like a (natural disaster here) because…

Word. Grab your favorite dictionary. Go to page 529 and select the 21st entry on that page. In my dictionary, it’s “gravy”. How does that word relate to your topic?

At Random. Click on “give me a random idea” at the Writer’s Window website. I got “being in a car accident.” What could you do with that in your blog?

Gender Game. Consider how the opposite sex from you would think about a topic. Is there a female approach to social media? How would that manifest itself?

Do you have ways to break through writer’s block? If you try some of the above ideas, let me know how they worked for you.