Article by:
Marie Jane
Welcome to the Smash Room. It is the prescription you need when you are about t...
Between long working weeks, the pull of family visits back home, and a climate that keeps most people indoors for half the year, finding a steady rhythm for a novel in Dubai can be tricky. Many writers here are juggling more than one language in their heads, drafting in English while thinking in Arabic, Hindi, Tagalog, Urdu, or Russian, which can make the blank page feel even more stubborn. The good news is that a stalled manuscript is rarely a sign of a bad idea. It usually just means the story needs a different way in. Here are three low-pressure exercises that work well with a Dubai routine, whether you write early before the heat sets in, during a long commute across the city, or late at night once the apartment is finally quiet.
Sometimes the fastest way through a block is simply to say the story out loud rather than type it. Use the drive between Downtown and Marina, or the quiet hour before iftar during Ramadan, to talk through your plot as if explaining it to a friend on the other end of a call. A voice memo on your phone is all you need. Play it back and listen for pace and logic, and notice whether the story pulls you forward the way a good coffee-shop conversation would. Pay attention to how each character sounds, especially if your cast is as mixed as the city itself, since accents, formality, and word choice can reveal a lot about who someone really is. For a second opinion, share the recording with a writing group; several meet informally in cafes and co-working spaces around the city and are usually happy to welcome a new voice.
If a particular relationship or decision in your story feels stuck, hand the problem to the character instead of solving it yourself. Write a diary entry, a text message exchange, or a set of emails between two characters who are avoiding each other. Given how many people in Dubai live far from extended family, you might try a letter one character writes home describing events from their own skewed point of view, or a message left behind before a sudden flight back to a home country. Push the exercise further by placing your characters somewhere completely outside the novel, waiting at an airport, stuck in traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road, or queuing at a government service centre, and see how they behave under pressure. These short detours rarely make it into the final manuscript, but they often unlock the scene you were avoiding.
To sharpen character voices quickly, have each major figure in your story respond to the same everyday situation. Keep it simple and local: imagine every character writing a short note of complaint about parking at their building, a message to a building manager about the air conditioning breaking down in July, or a text explaining why they are late because of Friday prayer traffic. The exercise forces you to notice whether your characters actually sound different from one another once the setting and stakes are identical. If they all sound the same, that is useful information, and if they sound distinct, you have just found a new angle into a scene you were stuck on.
After hours at a desk, particularly in a home office with the curtains drawn against the sun, it helps to physically reset before starting a new writing session. A walk around an air-conditioned mall, a lap of the pool before the afternoon heat, or simply making a proper meal instead of ordering delivery again gives the mind space to wander. None of these tasks feel as intimidating as facing a stalled novel, but they quietly create the mental distance that lets a solution to a stuck scene surface on its own. Repeat the cycle of talking it out, letting characters speak for themselves, and stepping away, and the block usually loosens well before you notice it happening.
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