Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Embrace the opposite

Hi guys! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. It’s finally August, and we’re now sadly beyond my birth month. I suppose it’s time I stopped celebrating. I suppose. But since it’s August, and since this is something that I’ve actually been dealing with in myself lately, I’ve come up with a topic that I think you’ll all absolutely love. We’re going to talk about getting outside your comfort zone, as a writer.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why in the world you’d want to get outside your comfort zone. After all, it’s quite comfortable in that little box you’ve decorated for yourself. You’re good in there. You know what you’re doing. You know what’s what. But this month, I want to challenge you to go beyond what you know, and expand your ability to write. Expand what you’re willing to write and what you believe yourself capable of writing. Open your mind to explore the whole realm of writing—because when you do, you’ll grow as a writer. And that’s really what we all want to do, isn’t it?

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Embrace the opposite

Most writers that I know are novelists, but I do know a few short story writers. There’s nothing wrong with either one. In fact, there are millions and billions of amazing things about being a short story writer, and millions and billions of amazing things about being a novelist. No one is better than the other. They’re both great, and they’re both skills you should have—which is why I picked it for the first subject of the month.

For the novelists:

You’re pretty well-versed in using lots of words to describe your scene, to expand your story, to really dig deep into the hearts and minds of your characters. You’ve become adept at using lots of words to show your readers what things look like, sound like, appear to be—but while that’s all well and good, a skill you’ll need at some point in your life is the exact opposite.

You need to learn how to be succinct. Why? Because there are times when you don’t need so many words to describe what’s going on, when you don’t need to know every single detail. And because by learning to be succinct, you’ll learn what words are completely necessary for your story, and which ones aren’t.

This, if you hadn’t already guessed, is something short story authors are already doing, every time they sit down to write.

For the short story authors:

You’re amazing when it comes to succinctness. You know what words are necessary and what ones are crutches. You know what phrases need to be there, and what ones need to be removed. You know how to tell an epic tale in an incredibly small number of words. You’ve become adept at cutting whole sentences and paragraphs out of your story, because you know it needs to stay under a certain word count—and while I’d be the first in line to tell you that you’re incredible and I wish I had a cheat sheet for your skills, at some point in your life, you need to know the opposite.

You need to learn to be flowery and flowy, how to describe things in full detail, not leaving out a single thing. You need to know how to get deep inside your character’s heads, to understand them down to their very soul. And the best way to do that, my dear authors, is to write a novel. Because novels, unlike short stories, demand that you use all your words.

Of course, this is exactly what novelists are already accustomed to doing.

As a writer, you need to know both. Why? Because there are short stories that demand floweriness, and novels that require succinctness. Because there are always situations where the other skill is the most useful, and because, let’s face it, we become better writers when we step outside our comfort zone and write in a way we’re not used to doing.

I’m not saying you have to publish your experiments, or even show them to anyone, ever. I’m saying that you should dabble, for yourself, to get your mind out of that pristine little box of comfort you’ve built around you.

And don’t worry, you’re not alone. I too am a novelist, who dabbles in the art of writing short stories. And I’m here for you, if you need help along the way.

[love]

{Rani Divine}