How To Video Games - Personal Writing Challenges

Sometimes, some people ask me about advice on writing, because I do quite a bit of it. And by “some,” I mean two or so people have asked in the past. And by “quite a bit,” I mean I pretty much write non-stop or think about writing. That may be viewable on the site. Anyway, usually any advice on that just results in saying: “Write more, much more.” That’s what it boils down to and that’s what’s helped me in the past, along with reading work on a few of my personal favorite writers. I'll do my best not to name drop anyone. Still, some of the refinement also comes from setting personal challenges, beyond what you get assigned. I have several rules I abide to for mental “review guides” or feature articles or even the patronizing top list.

Some sites have certain guidelines they’d like to apply, which makes the work seem more uniform and all that. It’s also a good way for writers to train their muscles in crafting articles in a predefined way, even if that may clash with their personal style. Myself, I set a few additional points. One of those has been the following:

Never write “The” at the beginning of a sentence.

It sounds weird, right? It is, a little, but there’s a reason for that. I noticed about two years ago that my writing had become repetitive to a ridiculous degree. One could argue it still is. Regardless, one of the issues was that my formatting had become too stale. Every next line would start with “The” and that was usually followed with “is” as a verb. Articles read like bullet point lists. It took some time to realize just how many phrases opened that way, but once I had that awareness, I had a clearer view on why my writing was so boring. Basically, the first half of every new line had become completely predictable. It was going to have those two words, then probably use some sort of conjunction, like “but” and add the next foreseeable item. Writers often have a hard time criticizing their own work, since everything we jot down is oh so very good. Still, being that formulaic was now apparent to me and so I vowed never to use that structure again, forcing myself to change every line that started this way. With rare exception, on things I mulled over for five minutes before caving in, I’ve done this until today.

Now, to be fair, my new structure hasn’t been perfect either. I still see this pattern today. Most sentences start with “That” or “This” or even “It’s.” It’s hard, you know? Despite my best attempts, there are still several replications appearing all over the place. That’s not the point. Damn it. Anyway, the point is that this mental exercise forces creativity back into the writing process. Excluding several options makes the rest a lot harder to accomplish; limited tools and all. Given the self-explanatory rule of also not repeating words constantly, but finding synonyms for it, paths quickly wear out on where to go next. For instance, try talking about sentences for 500 words, without using “sentences” at least a dozen times. Fun fact: I was also recently criticized for using too many synonyms. You just can’t win.

Anyway, one of the ways I seem to have managed to ward off that “the” curse is by switching the two fragments that usually appear in a line. In addition, I feel like it often made things sound additionally more sophisticated. Then again, I also recently received criticism that my writing is “trying too much” to be clever. We’re working on that one as well, people, we really are. It’s a constant process.  Breaking the phrasing format, however, isn’t always possible. Sometimes, it just would make it a little “too” pompous-sounding to speak like theater play all the time. We wouldn’t want that, would we? To prevent that, I apply a few other methods, such as distilling the proper noun and starting that way. Tools are still limited, but that’s the whole point: You make it work. I’m DIY ‘til I die, because writing about video games sure is punk rock.

I recently added writing on a tablet to the resumé. It's horrible.

So, if there’s anything to learn from this, it’s that writing better isn’t simply practice, but also requires obstacles, even if there are none readily available. Set obstacles, then shatter those and make more to avert routine. Force the creative edge.

In those few years of practice, I feel like mitigating some repetitiveness has come quite naturally, at least in that specific sense, not in my overall dull persona. That’s just my stupid face, sorry. With that, I’d also like to make this official and say that I’m content with the things I learned from this particular challenge and it’s time to let this one go. From now on, “The” is back on the menu of acceptable options. Don’t worry; I still have about a dozen other mental notes on how to write.

The time for change is still now.

See, you just knew that one was coming. Predictability is bad.