Exercises and strategies to help unstick you from a plot that's reached a dead end, get characters back on track (or perhaps on a new track) who have veered off the course you so carefully laid for them, and reignite the spark with which you started writing the novel/long short story when it is all but extinguished.

This includes writing outside the story; reacquainting yourself with your characters; revisiting your central premise and synopsis; planning/revising a detailed story outline; experimenting with narrative structure, point of view and tense and other exercises designed to 'free up' your writing and provide some impetus for getting back on the job.

Suitable for writers who are stuck some way through through a piece of longer fiction (although would be of some use to the short story writer) or are having difficulty with a redraft.

Clare Brown is the author of The Creation Myths and Dream Laboratory (both Bloomsbury) and Mothers' Day which was published in France and the Netherlands last year. Her short stories appear in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Five Leaves) and Staple. Prior to writing full-time she was Director of the Poetry Book Society and before that she worked in Theatre management and administration. She has led numerous creative writing workshops and courses and is currently a First Story Writer in Residence at Nottingham Academy. She has lived in Nottingham since 2003.

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