Finding Your Writing Niche (And I don’t mean genre!)
By Claudette
WHAT THE HECK DO I MEAN?
What I mean when I say your writing niche is the thing you do best. Some people are amazing at describing things, or actions or they write good characters, or plots, or, like me, I’m good with dialog. (So they tell me.) I’m horrible with description, so bad in fact that I tend to forget I should write it at all. You need to find out what you’re good at, and use it to your advantage! Now, I can’t exactly help you find what you are good at, but I can give you some tips. You will get people who read your writing and tell you what you are good at, but besides that, what do you enjoy? What do you write a lot? Do you start your story with dialog? (I do!) Or with description? Action? What you like may or may not be what you are good at, but for me, it is.
USING THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE WITHOUT FORGETTING OTHER THINGS EXIST
I’m going to use me as an example, because that is easy! I’m good at dialog. I don’t write scripts, but if I did, I bet I’d be awesome! The second best thing to that is using my dialog well in my stories. How do I do this? I use my dialog to explain background stories, express emotions, set up character development. I use it like it’s going out of style, to be cliché. I love dialog! It’s so easy to write, and so fun! My stories usually thrive on dialog, not always because it’s bad, but if I can get away with it, they do. My story will center on to characters talking, and it’s awesome! I use this skill of mine to make my stories good, but the only problem is I forget description and body language and especially scenery.
I try to keep in mind while writing, “Oh, no! Talk about the room or something!” but it doesn’t happen to often, so with my current (and new!) novel, when I’m done with each chapter I use the comment feature on Word to ramble about things I should fix, that way when I come back to it months later to rewrite, I already have something I know I can do better. I really have to pay close attention, or I will avoid describing anything. I also have to work hard at showing emotions through body language, rather than saying, “She was sad.” It’s annoying. This will be good for forgetful people like me, because each time you go back to edit that chapter you will see next to it: DESCRIBE STUFF!
In short: don’t abuse the other amazing parts of writing just because you’re awesome at one thing. Use them all. For that matter, practice them all! Try to be as good as you possibly can at everything. This will make writing easier!
WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM PUBLISHED AUTORS ABOUT “NICHES”
I got the idea for this article while rambling about a book, and I suddenly realized that even published authors have strength and weaknesses, but you remember them for their strengths, and usually don’t notice their weaknesses unless there is something amazingly horrible and outstanding! What I mean to say is, even though I’m terrible at description, if I don’t forget it exists entirely, and I use my strengths to help boost my story, I can still have really good writing. You don’t have to be perfect at everything to be an amazing writer, you just have to know how to use what you are good at to your advantage. But, by no means, use this as an excuse not to practice what you are bad at! Have fun writing!
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