As with any creative act or craft, you aspire to get better at it. Through practice and time, you hope to improve your craft, your art, your writing. One day, you’ll look back on those poems you wrote when you were a teenager and see the great leaps in skill and talent that you have taken, or is that just me?
While consistency and applying yourself are good ways to improve yourself 
at writing, another way is to challenge yourself, try something different, write in ways that perhaps you might not normally. The great thing about experimenting with writing and challenging yourself is that the costs are quite minimal and you have the chance to redo, rewrite, or delete something you don’t like. I absolutely discourage that, but you know, if you wanted to.
I’m going to share with you ways that you can challenge yourself as a writer. I’d also like to say that one of the biggest benefits of joining Written Off Writing is that it totally challenges you as a writer. How so?
- Plot Twists, you don’t know where your story will start, nor do you know where it will go. Why? Because we throw strange twists and turns at you for your narrative to take.
- Written Off Writing Group. You are given a drabble challenge to warm up, and then a prompt to start you on your writing way, but you don’t know what it is until you arrive.
- Creative Generators. On the top menu bar is a feast of menus for you to launch off into strange stories in a wide variety of genres.
Written Off is spontaneous; you have to improvise and challenge yourself, challenge your inner editor, go without a plan, just an idea. And more often than not, you surprise yourself on where you end up.
Try it!
Now, onto other ways to challenge yourself as a writer.
Change Your Location
If you’re always writing in the same space, such as a study in your home, physically change your writing location. Certainly go to a café and write, or to your local library, great 3rd spaces to take yourself.
But then try something different. Write at the beach. Write on a picnic table in the park. Go write in a shopping mall and make stories up about the people you see walking by. A great exercise is to write descriptions about people as they walk by. Not only are you trying to describe something you didn’t create, you have to do it before they disappear from sight. This helps you find economical ways of describing people, what they wear, how they walk, what’s their hair like?
Building on from this, find different ways to describe those people. One way is to describe WHAT they’re wearing, another is to describe WHY they’re wearing it.
- They’re wearing that shirt because they’re going for a job interview, which they need else they will have no money and will be living in their car.
- They were wearing a crisp white shirt, well-ironed and pressed, with just a hint of a blue ink stain on the pocket, obviously bleached many times.
Change Your Pet Genre
We all have our favourite genres we like to write in. I like the fantastical, speculative fiction. In a Written Off Writing Group, I had the prompt of my character being on a train that was reaching the end of the line. I got a vibe from Brad Pitt’s film Bullet Train, so I had my character on a train in Japan, heading into the mountains to visit family. All normal so far.
Then I shifted it into him being half-demon and living in the city. He is having a relationship with a cat spirit while he studies at University. He received a message that there was a death in the family, and in his family, when a demon dies it’s a huge thing. His father wants him to inherit a family mantle, but he just wants to study and hang with his friends.
I haven’t built the story much beyond that, but I like it. However, you see how something that could have just been a family drama, I had to add some fantastical element to it.
One of my challenges this year is to write something that is outside of my comfort zone. Last time I did this with a group they challenged me to write a romantic comedy, which was fun. Now I am being taunted to write a romantasy. Luckily, because it falls inside the Speculative Fiction ballpark, I get a veto on that.
Write some real life stuff. Write character based everyday stuff. Try some hard sci-fi, or some doom and gloom horror post apocalypse zombie story. As I said earlier, you won’t be breaking the bank wasting resources nor setting the smoke alarm off when your cookies burn.
Write Small
At the start of every Written Off Writing Group, we have a drabble challenge. Write a narrative in 100 words. It is harder to write fewer words, but it is a good challenge. When I started this with my original group, there were complaints and moans that it was too hard. Now it is a consistent part of each week and arguably the most popular.
It challenges you to leave empty spaces for the reader to fill in. It challenges you to leave hints, suggestions, open-endedness. It challenges you to be ruthless.
Have a Weird Conversation with Characters
Find two random characters. They can be characters that you’ve created, or from fiction that you love, or randomly generated. Put them in a room together and see what happens. I read a story a long time ago – Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, by Robert Silverberg. A computer program brings to life a simulation of a historical soldier. And then another soldier from a different time and place, and they interact. Simple premise, but a great challenge.
It is a fantastic character challenge for you. How would each of them react to each other, their surroundings? What misunderstandings would there be, would they fight or be friends? You get to practice thinking of character, writing dialogue, all in a safe space that isn’t learning while you write your novel, if you will.
Get Feedback on Your Writing
I like this challenge. All the challenges before this were easy. You could write in 1st person, write a My Little Pony Fanfic, stretch yourself and feel challenged. But this? This is a real tough challenge for some people.
Imposter syndrome hits writers hard. It’s one thing to tap away at your keyboard and write your cute little story, but to send it out into the world for someone else to read? They will discover how much you suck! That you can’t write, your characters are one-dimensional, there is only one plot, and they saw the resolution way before the end!
Rule #2 of Written Off Writing- You’re not allowed to say anything negative
about yourself or your writing. This rule is in place because we are such harsh critics of ourselves, and we think these bad thoughts. But if you voice them, they become more real. And if you’re going to let someone read it, you’re not allowed to tell them how bad it is and how it could be better. You’re not allowed!
You know why? Because often what you write is better than you think it is. This challenge gets you right out of your comfort zone. You might have to confront the fact that you’re a good writer! You might have to come to terms with criticism, justified feedback, and ways that you could possibly improve yourself to become even better!
Trust me, you never get over this. I am a content writer for a day job, and writing for clients is still a scary thing. Everything I write goes off to be judged by someone who is paying money for it. Not just a fan, but a client. You do get better at it, but it will never go away.
But lean into that. Learn from the feedback, lean into that fear and use it to show them they’re wrong! Or, something just as fantastic with a great soundtrack backing you up and a training monologue, yeah?
Ask a Family Member or Friend to Read it
When I found out my parents read my novels, I was mortified. But they liked it. Now I have no problems with people I know reading my stuff. I am trying to be more honest with my work, especially the drabbles I write, so my vulnerabilities are showing. I still like it when family and friends, people who mean something to me, read my work.
Now for some of you, you might fear that they will look at you differently and think- that’s what’s in their head? That is why this is a challenge.
Get Professional Editing.
This is a challenge. This is putting skin into the game. If you get yourself professionally edited, you are now putting worth into your creation. There is a purpose here. Professional editing leads to second and third drafts, leads to *gasp* publishing!
It is you taking yourself seriously. It is you telling people you know that you’re investing in yourself and your craft. Something that other people may have thought you did on weekends or just doodled, now there could be a book on the shelves in book stores! One day someone might know you, a published author and want an autograph!
Let’s dial it back a bit first, and get your book professionally edited. Pay money, to someone you don’t know, to read through and give you brutal, honest feedback, and ways to make your story stronger, better, and more awesome.
Challenge Yourself Often
I could tell you to challenge yourself to write every day, or write 500 words a day. We’ve all seen those challenges. Heck, I’ve done the November Novelling challenge every year since 2002. Yes, it is difficult, but it feels more like a challenge of production. I challenge you to produce a quantity, not a quality.
Find ways to challenge your creativity. Write a story with no dialogue, with characters. Write a story backwards, pretend you’re an animal, do something different.
I challenge you to join one of our free Plot Twists! Keep an eye out on the Socials for the next one, and come along and see where the merry ride of spontaneous story takes you. I challenge you to join the Written Off Patreon and do some improvised creative writing every month.
Challenging yourself keeps this habit fresh and alive. It stops you getting bored with writing because you can find many different ways of telling a story, of telling YOUR story.
The more you challenge yourself, the better you will become, the more awesome words will come flowing from your creative minds.
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If you are looking to challenge yourself at least once a month with other like-minded writers, join the Written Off Writing Patreon. Memberships start from just $8 a month and give you a Plot Twist event, usually on the first Sunday of every month.
