Bloganuary day 3! Today’s prompt is:
Write about the last time you left your comfort zone.
This is such a great prompt for writers, because stepping out side our writer’s comfort zone is something we should be doing on a regular basis in order to grow as a writer. It doesn’t have to be a big leap outside our comfort zone, but as often as we can, we should try new things.
For me, my comfort zone lands in the warm and fuzzy, feel good stuff. In real life, I focus on the positive side of life and am not a fan of confrontations. Which makes writing conflict a big challenge for me. And in Western storytelling, it’s firmly believed that without conflict there is no story. So that’s been an ongoing, constant case of stepping outside my writer’s comfort zone.
I’m constantly reading up on the writing craft and trying new things. Which provides me with small stretches outside my writer’s comfort zone as well.
But something else I did was I tried my hand at writing short stories. They’re not masterpieces, but they were fun exercises. Since I write YA Fantasy, I took one of the short stories a step further and wrote an adult contemporary romance in third person. I also attempted to write it in past tense, but realized on a recent review that I didn’t do that well! haha (It’s on my to-do list to fix.)
Venturing outside our writer’s comfort zone is a great way to explore new horizons and find areas of writing that we might otherwise have never known we enjoy.
Once I’m more comfortable with writing conflict, I’d really like to give the kishotenketsu story structure a try. While this will actually play more into my comfort zone, it will be something new and I look forward to it!
What is your writer’s comfort zone? And what have you done recently to step outside of it?
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