My brother has been with me as I've embarked on my journey to become a self-sustaining writer. My struggle has inspired him to pursue a similar dream. He wishes to write comics, graphic novels and movies. He LOVES superheroes and revamped comic book stories from Grimms Fairy Tales to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Recently he told me he wants to write a new Power Rangers movie.
For the past several months he has focused on this genre. He has produced a rough draft to a novella, a handful of comics and a couple of short stories. I have read most of his work and believe in my heart the work is not quite ready to be sold. I want him to improve his craft on two major levels 1) Grammar 2) Composition. The first level is self explanatory. Words, punctuation, grammar are tools the writer must understand in order to build a story from the ground up. My brother works well with some tools. Others he has little to no experience. Composition is a different animal. Composition includes character development, pacing, description, dialogue and the overarching strategy used to reveal and advance key aspects to plot, conflict, climax and resolution. There are no rules for composition. Its all fair game. A writer can do whatever he or she wishes, which makes this extremely difficult to teach, learn, cultivate, improve and judge. This is the area of writing my brother has the most opportunity for improvement.
To become a better writer, one must read and write. Seems obvious, doesn't it? I've encouraged my brother to keep writing, hoping that practice, practice and more practice would be his path to improvement. However, after 8 months of writing, I have seen little improvement in his grammar or composition.
So recently, I decided to explore a different strategy. I am trying to get him to write outside of his preferred genre. He's been stuck in the same conventions that make up superhero stories so long now that his writing has not advanced. He is spinning his wheels. Staying in the same place. I have him doing two things: 1) Writing beer reviews. 2) Creative writing exercises you might see in a high school classroom. He has been at it for a few days and I can already see how his approach to writing has shifted. We are still early in this process and have not seen immediate improvements in his writing, but I believe we have taken a good first step.
The moral of my story is this: If you find yourself stuck, your wheels spinning needlessly in place, try writing something completely different for a change. Break out of your chosen genre just to see what comes out. You may be surprised to discover that you are not as good of a comic book writer as you thought. You might just discover that you are an excellent beer reviewer!
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