Hey everyone! Here we are again on another week with another post. So far, this series is going very well, and everything is on time. I’m so excited! I’m glad that you have returned for another’s weeks post. I wanted to ask if anyone goes back and reads previous posts or recommends previous series to anyone they know. If you do let me know and if you find any problems in previous posts, please also let me know about those. I would be very interested in knowing if there is anything wrong. And without further ado…
Inspiration: Write In A New Way
This week’s post is about something that seems really easy but that I actually have a hard time doing and I’m sure other writers also have a hard time doing. It’s especially difficult if you are a writer who has been writing for a long time. You have your set ways of writing, your favorite genres and tropes and it’s hard to write something different. Sometimes you need to change it up and sometimes you just need to try an interesting new free write activity.
This week’s post is going to be split up into several different sections because writing in a new way in and of itself is a simple concept, just do it. But I’m hoping that this article can have a few new ways to write in a new way that can inspire you to try them and then get new, better, and unique ideas from those new activities or tests of writing in new ways.
Change Genders
Something that I didn’t know when I was a beginning writer that I learned several years along in the process which made me feel really dumb for not thinking about earlier is that female POV books and male POV books are written in different ways. I discovered this mostly by accident when I was writing a story where my main character was a male elf trapped in a human town where he was treated like an animal. I was having a hard time writing him because he was the main point of view for the story but the main character was actually supposed to be his friends so that was difficult. Because it was difficult to be writing this weird way, I had some beta readers who read every chapter as I wrote it. At about chapter six both of my readers came to me shocked that my character was a male. I was so confused. I had clearly stated at several parts throughout the story up to that point that he was a male. My friends explained to me something that blew my mind.
He talked like a girl.
Up to this point I hadn’t even thought about the fact that writing a male character as a female would mean that my character would have to speak differently than I myself did. I have practiced and practiced and to this day still struggle to write first person male POV’s. But if I am ever struggling to come up with inspiration a really good way to write in a new way is for me to imagine that my main character is a different gender than they are in the story. This always gives me unique ideas that I hadn’t thought of before because I thought of my character in a specific way. In this way I break my character out of the mold that I built for them and I can suddenly see them as a more flexible and relatable person. In this way I create more open and interesting stories.
Switch POV
Like I mentioned earlier, when you are a writer, you tend to find different things in writing that you enjoy and you stick to them while writing. One of the things that most writers pick one of and stick to is the POV from which they write a majority of their stories. For example, I am a First Person POV writer. No matter how hard I practice or try I can’t seem to write any stories in any other POV effectively, so I stick with First Person.
However, if I am ever lacking for inspiration in my story, I will throw caution to the wind and write a scene or two for my story in a different POV. Not only does this get my brain working on writing, but it also gives me an opportunity to explore my story and world a little bit more. As a writer who writes in First Person there are often moments in my story that I don’t write about or that other characters have to relate to my main character at a later time. Writing from other perspectives once in a while gives me a chance to really explore the other aspects of my world or storyline, even if they never end up in the completed manuscript.
Find Fun New Free Write Activities
The previous two ideas for writing in a new way generally work the best for stories that you are already working on. However, sometimes you are lacking for inspiration on how to even start a book or any ideas for a story at all. One of the best ways to solve this problem is to find a new free write activity that you have never tried and just go with it and write whatever you want. Some of my best books have actually come from free writing activities. A book I have enjoyed working on, on and off for a couple years is my story The Demon Contractor which were inspired by two separate free write scenes that I created. They seemed to be set in a similar world and so I placed them together to create a whole new book idea.
One of my favorite free write activities is something I like to call vocabulary run. I started doing this activity in junior high school. When I was growing up in school you always had those vocabulary lists in English class with new words for every week. I was always bored in those classes because most of the vocabulary we were working on I already knew. So, one of my teachers challenged me once that for every new vocabulary list every week I had to write a short scene or story using all the words from our vocabulary list. And I did. This has been one of my favorite free write activities ever. Sometimes I will look up a simple list of school vocabulary and free write a story using all the words. Several of those free writes have inspired whole books.
Another fun free writing activity is to use a book and flip to page 10 and read the first word on the page. In the first page of writing something you have to incorporate that word. One the second page you need to incorporate the first word from page 20 and on the third page the first word on page 30 and so on and so forth until you feel like you have a complete story idea. I’ve had people who take this challenge and instead of every page its every paragraph has to use the first word. I’ve had people do the first word of page 10 and the second word of page 20 and the third word of page 30 etc. Anyway, you do this one, it can be entertaining and fun.
There are all sorts of interesting free writing activities and you can find a large majority of them on the internet by searching free writing activities or free writing ideas. They can be a fun way to get yourself writing and also inspire you with new story ideas or concepts.
I hope this week’s post was helpful. I love trying new writing things as a source of inspiration. I hope that you can try writing in a new way to be inspired with a new story idea. As I say every week, don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a page member, share, and follow me on social media at the links at the bottom of the page. I hope that I can see you all there, and don’t forget to get the word out even if it’s about old posts such as my Getting Started Series for new writers. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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