8 Ways to Challenge Your Writing Craft to Boost Your Creativity
A creative mind thrives on new and challenging ideas
Even accomplished writers feel they aren't creative enough to produce their masterpieces. They experience lulls during their writing. They get stuck in the middle of their writing, whether they write a novel, short story, or article. They get lost in the suspicion cycle that they are recycling the old stuff repeatedly, and nothing new comes to mind.
Others may experience a total writer's block that often leads to their complete degeneration to an ordinary man who can't write. But accomplished writers find a way out of it. New writers face the risk of giving up writing.
Starting a writing career in the first days feels quite alluring, but after a few weeks, one gets stuck. They are left with an empty mind where nothing new sprouts.
If you are a new writer and feel that you have exhausted all your thoughts and nothing good comes to mind, don't worry.
You are not alone in staring at the blank screen for hours without writing. Many prominent writers are with you in the same boat. But their experience as a writer helps them to come out of the writing quagmire, eventually. The novice writers may give up. Because they feel it's over for them.
But it's not over yet.
Here are the eight ways to challenge your writing craft to boost your creativity and come out of writer's block.
1. Use The Snowflake Method to brainstorm new ideas.
Randy Ingermanson, a creative writing instructor and novelist, created the snowflake method — an innovative technique for boosting one's novel-writing craft.
He believes a writer can craft his novel from scratch by thinking of the story's bigger picture and then summarizing it in one sentence, which he calls a snowflake.
Once you have visualized your story, add additional elements of the novel such as characters, dialogues, setting, and descriptions. This will help you turn that one sentence into a paragraph.
After that, expand that paragraph into a storyline and character description, and link everything to the primary idea centered on the "snowflake."
You can use this technique not just for novel writing but also for essay writings, short story writing, and article writing.
2. Develop your story from the title
Another good way to get your creative juices flowing is to start with a title. When you don't know what to write or have a blurred idea about something, but you don't know how to approach it, write a few titles and select one to make a start.
Starting from a title will help you narrow down your focus, quickly developing by brainstorming relevant ideas.
Don't write a dull title. Write a title that has the potential to compel your brain to think more related ideas about it. Once you have collected pictures, craft a neat outline from them.
This technique can help you with many writing. Take it as a challenge to stir your mind and expand your mental horizon by writing titles.
I use this technique to boost my creativity. I just pick up an intriguing title and write about it. No matter how limited my knowledge is about that title, I get something out of my mind. And it's worth the effort.
3. When writing, keep your friends and family members as your audience
Knowing your audience develops your writing craft. You know why you write and what to write. So, when you write next time, imagine a friend or a family member as your audience.
This is the best technique to know your writing style or to develop one. This technique also helps you write more creatively. Writing for a friend or a family will help you keep a known audience in your mind because you know them.
It also brings out your innate style. You will try to be as original as you talk to them in real life. And that's your style.
4. Write the end first and then develop your story towards that end
Ending a story is a tricky thing because it makes or breaks the story. Readers won't like your story if it leads to an unsatisfying end. But if a story has a great ending like Ana Karenina and The Great Gatsby, you achieve an indelible effect on readers' minds. They won't forget your story.
Because the end is what they remember the most.
It's hard to start from the end. But it's the best way to streamline your story. Once you have resolved how your story will end, your entire story will run towards it.
The events in your story will lead towards it automatically, as you will focus on driving them towards a predestined goal. All the characters will act in a way that leads up to the end.
Wonderful stories like The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Wuthering Heights start from almost the end.
You can use this technique for essays, articles, and memoirs if you are not a novelist. You can map out the conclusion or the end beforehand and then develop your story.
I use this technique often when I write articles or essays. I map out the whole idea first, craft outlines, and then write the conclusion. This makes my writing much easy and then I just write with little thinking about how everything will end. Instead, everything goes to its end.
5. Challenge yourself to write in a different genre
Writing in a single and well-practiced genre doesn't provide much for a creative craft. Because you already know how to write it.
The genuine thrill comes in writing when you write in an unknown genre. For example, you write well in the romance genre but haven't tried crime fiction.
So, challenge yourself to write crime fiction and see how you write. This will show you your shortcomings and will definitely give you a tough time. You will use your creative faculty of mind more rigorously.
It will provide you a chance to run your imagination into an unknown realm of thoughts. And this gives a real boost to your creativity.
You can use it for any type of writing, such as writing articles and essays. You can choose a topic from feminism, relationship, and productivity. But if this is your area, you can choose a scientific area or machine learning.
I always try to write on a new topic every week. I write about productivity, writing, and history most of the time. But I also challenge myself to write on relationships, diet, bodybuilding, and machine learning, which aren't my areas.
6. Come up with a new idea every day.
Writers who experience writer's block lack this one thing. They cannot come up with new ideas.
Forming a habit of writing a new topic or an idea helps you break your writer's block and boosts your creativity.
Many of the ideas you come up with may not have the potential to turn into a novel or even a short story, but pursuing this strategy, you may end up with the best idea of your life that you can turn into a hefty book.
You can apply this strategy to every field of writing. I have almost 80 topics in the draft that demand special attention, but I constantly develop a new idea and write on it.
When I cannot think of an idea, I look into the stock of topics I have collected and write about it. I have so many ideas and topics that I can write on them for almost three months without thinking of a new idea if set to write.
Despite that, I look for new things every day. This helps me stay creative and productive.
7. Write about something that would have fascinated you as a child
Children are at the height of creativity and exploration. They always get fascinated by something. Every new thing captures their attention. They have dreams and visions they want to see and realize.
They get inspired by writing, movies, and other objects that stir their curiosity. The best thing about staying creative in writing is to write about something that would have fascinated you as a child.
You can write about the freedom from your school, the cartoons you have loved, the movies you have watched, or anything that would appeal to your younger self.
I write about things that fascinated me as a child. The fantasies and the unusual universe fascinated me. The strange objects that kept me jaw-dropped for hours. I always imagined an extraordinary world and strange things.
I even have a bigger plan to write a novel about my childhood imagination. This technique helps me stay imaginative and creative. It also compels me to write regularly to sharpen my skills to capture my imaginations in my upcoming book.
8. Search for new ideas online
In this modern age, when we spend most of the time online on social media or any other platform, there is no dearth of new ideas and topics to get inspired.
Most of the time, I read online. I read stories, read articles. I watch videos and movies. All these things have at least something to trigger my imagination to run wild.
I write about the books I have read. I write about the movies I have watched. I also write about various things that fascinate me.
I also search online when a fleeting idea clicks in my mind. I do research on it by consulting with various resources. Develop a perspective on it and write on it.
Wrapping it up
Getting stuck in the middle of writing a novel or any other piece of writing is expected. But staying stuck isn't normal. Various accomplished writers have experienced staring at the blank page for hours, producing nothing of worth. Newbies are no exceptions.
Whether you are an accomplished writer or have just started, you can break your writing block. You can avoid the writing lulls by following these ways:
- Using the snowflake method developed by novelist Randy Ingermanson to stay creative
- Start a story from a title and develop it into a full-fledged novel
- Imagine your audience are your friends and family and write for them
- Write the end of your story first and develop the story later
- Write in a different genre one day every week
- Come up with a new idea every day and inspect it if it is worth writing
- Write about things that would have fascinated you as a child
- Search online for new topics and write on it
