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Reinventing Oneself

© Dave A. Law

A common mistake of any writer is to get too wrapped up in his or her own style and reading interests in stories. For example, only reading comic books and/or only reading the same genre of stories. While there is nothing wrong with enjoying and being influenced is either, the trap is the tendency to write stories, which are derivative of the material you read and if this material is only one source, such as super hero comics, the likelihood of creating something new or original enough to spark the interest of the reading public is reduced. Whereas if you read something different occasionally, it might change your mindset to view your writing in a different manner and allow your writing to become more original and less derivative. Take any successful writer, comic book or otherwise, and look at the material that they read themselves. You will not find one of them that doesn't occasional read stories quite different from their own and you might find a few that never read any stories from within their own genre or chosen medium such as comics.

As comic book writers it is often too common that we get entrapped with our own little worlds forgetting that there are forms of writing, genres or even other writing mediums. By breaking away from our own traditional forms of writing and experimenting with others can we bring a new prospective to our stories. This could simply be writing a story in a genre we do not commonly attempt, writing in a different medium, or even experimenting with a common medium such as changing how we would normally structure a comic page and describe the scenes within it. Sometimes these experiments will fail and occasionally, perhaps rarely, we come across something that changes how we write forever. It is only through these little experiments and retreats back into our original forms of writing do we improve and expand ourselves as writers.

Whether you are very happy with how your work is progressing or in a rut, think about your own writing. How often have you tried something different? How often have you read something you won't normally read? How willing are you to make that next step in your evolution as a writer? It doesn't have to be much, but occasionally we need to step onto on our desks and look at the world a different way to avoid our writings being trapped in the same prospective. Get onto your desk and have a look around.

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