About a year ago, this guide saw the light of day. it was a simple, basic little post which I gathered my personal thoughts on the lack of muse into and where I presented the ways I regained muse. But there is more I did not include there or what I have found out during the year between posting these two guides.
Reminder! Please be reminded the following tips are the things which help me write and regain muse and which I think may help you as well, although not all of these work on everybody. Please do not argue or spread hatred; if you want to point something out or discuss, please do that in a civilised way.
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Advanced Guide to Curing Lack of Muse
1. Challenge Yourself
A lot of people only write characters who are of their real life sex, gender, health, race, sexuality, have the same views on different things or whatever else. There are many who don't explore new things and keep doing the same stuff with their characters. That is awesome and if you feel you have a lot of muse writing that way, just keep doing what you do. Although a huge muse-boosting activity to do is to write a character who is nothing like you or actions which are rather difficult to write.
How does that help, you may ask, if it makes posts more difficult to write? First of all, it expands your comfort zone. You know some people who say people should try new things? They are not lying -- if you do new things, explore, challenge yourself, you actually have to get out of the zone you've sat in for a long time. It makes you see everything from a completely different new view.
That helps a lot and makes writing more interesting, as well as making you a better writer.
2. Know Where Your Comfort Zone Is (& When to Come Back to It)
Now that you have learned to challenge yourself and have come out of your comfort zone, you should also know when to come back to that zone. Exploring new things and trying awesome actions makes you understand RPing a lot more, but from time to time, you may lose your muse again and there is just nothing you seem to be able to do about it.
Then it's time to come back to where you once were. If you return to what you used to RP, you usually feel welcome, you feel like you have better control over what you write. After all, writing is a lot like traveling. A lot of people like to go to new places, but they also like to come back home.
The comfort zone is the place where you can rest, where your muse flows back into you. If you ever feel like challenging yourself tires you, just return to what you once did. This little change will have a huge impact on your writing.
If the case is extreme, a good thing to do is to bring back an old character you once loved. You return to somebody who you are familiar with. You don't have to think so much about what your character would do. It lets your mind rest.
3. Love Your Character
This is a really important part. You are a member of Chaos, you're a writer of a character. And the character is completely yours. You should love them, you should enjoy RPing them. And at any given time, you may ask from yourself, do you really like the character, their development or their environment.
If the answer is yes, then just keep on doing what you do. It's also a green light to exploration -- a good time to challenge yourself. But if the answer to that question is no, then something has to be done. Why?
A lot of people fall into the pit where they can't get out. It's the time when they do can't write, no matter what. It is a good time to ask yourself again, do you like your character. If you don't, change everything you dislike about them and make them the character you love. Leave threads, leave people, leave factions. You are the character's writer and their quality and story should be about you.
It is the most important to know that your love for a character is more necessary than anybody else's love for that character. If you enjoy them, just write. If not, do something about it. Simple as that.
But I do also have to note: if you have to make changes which can hurt people, please do not just ignore what's going on. Talk to the other writer, be honest. They may understand. They should understand. But do not leave them wondering what happened. It's the cruelest thing that could happen.
4. Find the Correct Playby
Ahem. Not a really important one, but one that could be pointed out. The correct playby for your character can make a huge difference. Scroll through Google, lists of celebrities or artwork websites or anime pages, whichever type of playbys you love using. Find the playby you love.
Use the playby that inspires you.
5. Write.
Now this is a huge variable. It's different for everybody and it's difficult to generalise this part. But there is a way. And I will talk about it.
Make yourself write. Don't stare at the screen, waiting for the inspiration to struck you. You must make it come, you must take control in your own hands. I have also mentioned that in my previous guide, but a really important thing is to write whatever comes into your mind. Characters don't have a mind of their own, but if you let them have control over your body, they will make you write what they do.
That was a little bit of a fictional way of describing that. But what I mean is that you should not be thinking hard of what your character should do. Well, yeah, you must think because it's rather impossible to stop thinking especially when writing a post, but don't forget to let your characters act either. After all, you are writing down their actions, not your thoughts. So just let your fingers move, words form and posts appear.
Another good thing to do is to have a goal. I am quite sure some people here have idols -- people they would love to be like. I have them as well. And when I look at them, I feel like I want to be as successful as they are. It is a goal. And that goal makes me want to write.
There are numerous goals. Maybe you want your character to reach Master rank, maybe you have the secret desire to become a faction leader or you just want to have a new thread in your RP list. Goals don't have to be huge. They can be really simple like 'I will write a two paragraph post' or 'I want to mark this thread as "completed", so I will finish this thread'. What's more important is to have some sort of a goal.
The thing is, even if you don't feel like writing at all, think of a goal, go to the thread you have to post at, and write whatever comes into your mind and what your character would do.
6. Don't Try to Be Overly Unique
Being unique is awesome. We're all unique. But if you make characters who scream "I AM UNIQUE! LOOK AT ME! I AM AWESOME!", I have some terrible not so unique news for you.
A considerable number of people do that and that is the problem why they can't write. They create a character so unique or overly interesting, odd, abnormal or whatever else that their actions will become very limited or they just lose interest in these characters.
Don't get me wrong, if you are really sure about yourself and want to be unique, do that. But if you lose your muse because of trying to avoid clichés, you actually do a bad deed for yourself. Clichés exist for a reason -- they are something that work and which are generally awesome in the mainstream population's opinion. You are not supposed to avoid them. Embrace the cliché, but don't go too overboard with it.
Don't force yourself to be unique. Do what makes you happy and be yourself. If you do that, you automatically become unique.
Thank you for your attention!
