Congrats on conquering your writer's block! How does it have the creativity flowing freely again?
I'm working on a horror anthology, so each story is different from the other. It is about how love and fear bring out both the best and worst in each of us. The stories available now are linear but some future installments won't be. Generally, I use a lot of symbolism, foreshadowing, and imagery. I'm trying to ease up a bit on the foreshadowing though and improve my use of metaphor.
Research is another common tool--I read as much as I can about different histories, people, places, cultures, art, religions, legends/folklore, etc. all over the world to make things more convincing.
Thanks for this thread - was interesting to read the diverse perspectives from yourself and others here.