The Summer Outside Your Comfort Zone

I mostly just find writing other ages... boring- as terrible as that sounds! Though middle aged characters are the worst for me. So I gotta work through that somehow xP

@Elinor- it's funny because you were one of the people I was thinking about in whose writing I recognise similar themes! Which is good because it proves that there are certain things that your passion for has never waned... or at least, that's what I tell myself about fairytales >.> hey, wanna swap? I'll write something set in 20th century America and you can write a fantasy fairy tale retelling xD it'll be fun and/or an *utter trainwreck*

I'm down!

StellaThomas wrote:@Cadi - now I'm a bit sad because everything on your comfort list is something I want to read. But I'm sure you're capable of making something great not on the list too.

Don't worry, my other two projects for the summer are a relatively mundane novel in a fantasy setting, and a collection of magical realism shorts where not much happens

@scribbleinks - omg second-hand embarrassment! I don't think I could write it either! Although I think maybe it's a good thing you can't write fan fic. Not because it's bad, but because a lot of people are the opposite and find it hard to write anything but fan fic once they're in the habit!

I have a hard time reading/watching anything embarrassing, even to the smallest degree. I think writing it would be a nightmare! And I used to write fanfiction, but it was always with OCs and very little canon character involvement (because pre-existant universes? I don't have to worldbuild? yes please). Like I said, I get too worried about writing someone else's characters wrong :c

Honestly I don't think I've written enough to necessarily know my comfort zone, because a lot of things are still anxiety-inducing for me, but I'm down for this! Hopefully I can stretch myself and get more comfy!

Spoiler

My Comfort Zone: Free verse poetry, short stories revolving around action/ social justice themes, Angst™, simple language (which lends towards child narrators), soft fantasy, action scenes with no context whatsoever, narrators/ main characters that ultimately end up reflecting myself and my moral standards, Bad Boys Who Are Secretly Softies, post-apocalyptic-ness
Things that make me anxious to write: Well-rounded, well thought out characters that didn't just pop up spontaneously from my skull for one short story (never to be seen again), villains with understandable motives (but I want to try), amoral characters who remain amoral and aren't secretly good inside, romance of any kind, structured poetry, older characters, narrators without a moral compass, autobiographical work, realism (I've tried once, it went okay, but BOY was I stressed), scripts, sci-fi that isn't post-apocalyptic or dystopian, western, mystery/horror/suspense, and FINISHING THINGS- especially long projects like novels or novellas. Long projects stress me the heck out.

I may add more as I think of them, but that's what I got.

Attempts:
1. LMS (large project! super intimidating, but so far so good!)
2.
3.
4.

My Comfort Zone:
Mainly post-apocalyptic sci-fi (super cliche),
poetry that doesn't rhyme, or have a beat

Things that make me anxious to write:
rhyming poetry, stories with boys as main characters, realistic fiction, magical/fantasy world fiction

Attempts:

1.
2.
3.
4.

This comes at a perfect time. Maybe expanding my horizons will give me more motivation to actually write. xD And I'll probably add to these as I brainstorm more, but I'm excited!

My Comfort Zone:
- Magic! I love to make up my own fancy kinds of magical rules and systems for characters to play around with, and, particularly, I really like almost realistic magic that could almost maybe exist in the real world if physics were tweaked just a little bit.
- Snarky characters are pretty much my only characters. They are also my main characters. Though, I feel like I'm pretty good at characterizing characters with really distinct traits that are typically bold in some way or really intelligent/cunning/witty/etc.
- Science fiction also falls squarely in the comfort zone since I feel like have a lot more creative liberty
- Introspective, quiet scenes typically tend to be some of my stronger ones and I feel really comfortable writing them, since I can utilize description and a much slower pacing that makes me feel confident about what I'm writing.

Things that make me anxious to write:
- Flash Fiction: If it's less than 4,000 words, it feels incomplete to me. I world build way too much and I want to include every little detail in the final product so that the reader feels exactly how I feel about the characters and the story. Even though that's kind of missing the point of writing <.< Maybe I'll do one of these.
- A normal female character that is not either hyper feminist and bad ass or incredibly emotional. It's kind of a problem, because I myself am both of those xD
- Poetry. 'nuf said.
- Anything that is meant to be fast paced or upbeat (like optimistic in anyway) are typically the hardest things for me to write because, as mentioned, I like much slow moving, more inwardly directed scenes
- On that note, realistic fiction is really hard for me because it's just boring in my opinion. Romance is too cliche, teen stories or "coming of age" stories are too angsty or slow, crime or mystery is too not in my ally, and if it's in a high school, I'll do what I do best in class: sleep.
- IF IT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IT IS SO PAINFUL TO WRITE. WHY DO I CRINGE AT MY LIFE. (Even though I wrote a memoir once and my creative writing teacher told me it was probably one of my better pieces of writing so maybe I'll tackle it for this challenge.)
- This probably sounds awful, but I'm really scared to write anything with LGTBQ+ characters or with characters of ethnicities that aren't white because I'm so afraid I'm going to represent them wrong or poorly and it's just going to be a mess. So maybe I can try to tackle that?

Spoiler

I actually thought about this a little bit before I wrote up this post, and I'm very much a "plan out the basis of the idea really thoroughly and run with it" kind of writer, so these are some cool ideas I thought I could write.

~ A murder mystery written in the second person, loosely based off of (or well, more accurately, inspired by) Who Killed Markiplier?
~ A children's story of some kind or like a really simplistic story that is written in a really simplistic or kiddish nature.
~ Maybe a slice of life story about a normal teenage girl meeting a normal teenage boy (or not) and falling in love.

Attempts:
1. Captain's Log
2.
3.
4.

My Comfort Zone:
I usually go for romance poetry and romance/fantasy/action novels. I usually write personal poetry rather than made up things haha.
Things that make me anxious to write:
scripts, lyrics, and fanfiction. Oh geez.
Attempts:
1.
2.
3.
4.

So I finally managed my first attempt:

Next Summer

I know that @TheBlueCat and @Elinor have written some short stories, which I'm going to review now- has anyone else done any that I've missed?

For those of you that have, how did you find the experience?

I'm just gonna jump in here and say what I've been meaning to say for *days* - I love this idea (although I have no idea what my comfort zone is lol... let's try nowhere because I'm bad at all of it?) and really wish I had the time to participate! I have too much on my plate at the moment with two novels to work on, but I've definitely been thinking about this and how I can push myself with my writing. Maybe I'll jump in at some later point, depending on how my summer unfolds.

I absolutely love this idea. I would love to try my hand at it.

Spoiler

My Comfort Zone: I like writing sci-fi/thriller/drama/romance short stories.
Things that make me anxious to write: Poetry of any sorts, for I don't really understand what goes into making this particular art form. Fiction that involves worldbuilding, fantasy or horror.

Attempts:
1. Our Nature
2.
3.
4.

I’m in! I probably won’t complete the challenge, but I might as well give it a go.

Spoiler

My comfort zone: Diaries. Historical fiction. Fantasy fiction.
Things that make me anxious to write: Scripts, lyrics, poems and fiction with a boy as the main character.

Attempts:
1. Night-time
2.
3.
4.

I came pretty close to a poem the other day when I was crying about school shootings, but I'm not there yet. As far as revision goes, well...now I have even more ideas, so that's good. They're a product of freaking out last night when I realized there's way more of the story left than I thought, which is going to push my total word count too high, even considering all the things I already thought I could cut.

Tbh I'll probably make planning for the next draft/revision my focus, although if I get another half-decent poem written then there'll be that, too.

Wrote my second story!

The Princess and the Pauper

@Elinor I am SO JEALOUS.

I have ideas and titles for each of my Summer Outside pieces, but have written none of them. One is a novelette (I think, so far) so that'll probably be my last one posted -- but the first one I start working on.

hoping to have a short story posted up in the next week or two here.