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How To Experiment With Your Writing

By on August 25, 2016
How To Experiment With Your Writing - Writer's Life.org

Writing is all about being creative, and with creativity comes trial and error. It is always good to experiment with your writing - it keeps those ideas coming, helps you improve your writing technique and perhaps even opens up a whole new way of telling your stories that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought about before.

Experimental writing will break up your routine, refresh your mind and is fun to do too!

Now let us make one thing clear. A solid writing routine is one of the most important things to stick to as a writer. However, if you have been writing the same kind of material forever, and you feel as though you are in a bit of a writing slump, changing up your routine by trying out some different writing techniques might be just thing you need to feel inspired again.

So how do you experiment with your writing and why should you do it?

Use an unusual perspective

You might always find that the stories you write are written from the same perspective, so why not mix it up? If you always use the first person, use the second or third and vice versa. Also, think about whose story you want to tell, you could write from the perspective of someone observing the story rather than in it, from someone who died many years ago, through the eyes of the family pet and so on!

Change your protagonist

Is your hero always a strong, handsome man with a dark secret, or a young woman who needs to find her feet in the world? Often we can fall into the routine of writing the same characters over and over again. Get out of your comfort zone and see where it takes you!

Change the timeline

Events don’t always have to happen in sequence. Experimenting with the timeline can be a great way of looking at your plot and seeing how it could work in different ways. Challenging the reader by telling your story non-sequentially can be an interesting way of getting them hooked.

Write in a different genre

Always writing love stories? Write a grisly horror. Love an action thriller? Try your hand at comedy. Experimenting with the various genres of writing will not only widen your writing calibre, but it may also make you fall in love with an entirely different type of writing altogether. You may stick to your chosen genre in the end, but you may be inspired to inject a little tragedy into your comedy, a little wickedness into your romance and so on, which will make your stories all the more layered and interesting in the future.

Try a different type of writing

Always writing short stories, why not see if you can write a novel? Or a play? Or a children's book? Experimenting with the type of writing you do could make you realise you have a talent for something unexpected.

Break the rules

Rules were made to be broken (sometimes). If you want to stick to the genre you are comfortable with, why not play around with the rules? Each genre has their own set of rules, their own formulas that make them easily identifiable as one thing or another. Surprise you readers by breaking these rules and see if you can still make the story work. It’s risky, but done well, a risk worth taking.

Experimenting with your writing is a great way to keep your creativity flowing and to learn new skills. You might always go back to the style and genre of writing you are used to when you have finished, but hopefully, by trying new techniques, you’ll return with an open mind, new skills and exciting ideas that can all be used to make your writing shine.

About Ty Cohen