Can restricted writing make you a greater author?
Before we talk about the concept of restricted writing and explain how it works, I would like to ask you the following: have you ever opened a new blank document for writing, stared at it for far too long, and then found that you had no ideas about it? Your mind is as empty as the page you want to write on? What if you could double or triple the number of your ideas by not doing something extra but taking something away?
This is what restricted writing is about: removing options so that you can actually become more creative.
What is restricted writing?
"Restricted writing" is a literary technique in which you set rules and limits for your writing. For example, haiku is a popular form of restricted writing. It is a form of poetry that has its origin in Japan and consists of three lines with five, seven and five syllables.
Restricted writing is the most common in poetry, but writers have also used the form. For example, there are several "lipogram" novels, novels written without a specific letter. Often, the eliminated letter "e" is the most common letter in the English language. The first example of this is a lipogram novel Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright, which was published in 1939 with the subtitle "Novel with 50,000 words without the letter E".
Another recent example is Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea from 2014 about a statue that mysteriously loses its letters. When they disappear from the statue in the novel, they also disappear from the book, and so writing becomes narrower as the story progresses.
However, the lipogram is only one way to restrict writing, and as challenging as it is, it is not the most common. Other forms of restricted writing include the following:
- Acrostics. In an acrostic poem, the first letter of a sentence, verse, or section must contain a letter that forms a pattern. Ancient Hebrew poetry loved acrostics, and many ancient Hebrew poems follow every letter of the alphabet.
- Length restrictions. Six word stories are a form of restricted writing, as are most types of poetic forms.
- Any shape. Forms of poetry with their specific structures and patterns of rhyme and rhythm are limitations. These include Limericks, Sonnets, Villanelles and Sestinas, of which I have already studied (and even wrote some) in Renaissance Lit, English 207 (thanks, Dr. Willis!). These all have very strict rhythm, rhyme and length restrictions. However, every form of writing, whether short stories, feature-length scripts or even novels, is subject to certain restrictions.
Set your own constraints to generate more ideas
Some authors believe that it sounds something like this: "It is my writing. I can do what I want. Forms are dead. I can invent new forms to tell the story I want to tell and aesthetic perfection to reach. "
I honestly had that belief. Maybe it came from the rebellion against all the crazy Renaissance poetry that I learned in college (thanks, Dr. Willis!).
But what happens when you rebel against the constraints is that you can easily get stuck and stare at a blank page.
"
If you can write something, it is very easy not to write anything. Restrictions make you creative.
The reality is that all writing is constrained by something, be it the limits of history, the limits of the writer's abilities, the limits of the market, or the limits of form.
Instead of rebel against the constraints, set your own! This is especially helpful when you are stuck and cannot imagine what to write next. Perec, a French writer who wrote a novel called A Void, avoiding the letter "e" (pun intended?) Said the complex rules and restrictions with which he wrote his most famous novel Life: A User Manual was one machine that creates ideas.
If you set restrictions on your writing, you may not find fewer ideas, but double or triple the number.
5 Ways To Use Restricted Writing To Become A More Creative Writer
Restricted writing can help you generate more ideas, but how should you restrict your writing? Here are five ideas:
1. Set a word count goal.
We will be constrained by something that many writers do, not necessarily to limit their writing, but to achieve the goal. However, the novel is a form, and while it is a form that is very loosely defined, a novel usually consists of more than 65,000 words and less than 120,000 words.
To use this limitation, first read our word count guide to find common word counts for different genres. Then set your goal and write your way there. The hard part for this limitation will be in the editing process when you have to cut your story to fit your word count!
2. Select a genre.
Shawn Coyne, creator of the Story Grid framework, defines the genre as a series of reader expectations. As a writer, you could make it worse than setting your constraint based on the readers who will one day read your book and hopefully enjoy it.
3. Limit your attitude.
How can you let your story play in as few places as possible?
This limitation is particularly useful for short stories where you are already limited in length and do not have enough space to develop many different settings. This is also critical for screenwriters (or novelists who one day want their book to become a movie), as each new location increases the film's budget.
When it comes to short stories – especially writing contests – it's not just a fun challenge to restrict your surroundings. It is practical. After analyzing the award-winning stories, I found that almost all of them take place in just one or two scenes. That means you not only need one or two places to tell a great story, but only one or two places.
4. Limit your occupation.
How can you tell your story with the least number of characters?
As an editor, I have often given advice on cutting characters or even merging them with other characters. Why? Because it is difficult for the reader to learn a lot of new characters, develop a bond with them, and then start finding (or hating) them. This is one reason why we love novels, television and even film series so much. It allows us to follow characters longer than just a book, film, or episode.
If you've ever seen a play with one or two actors, you know how powerful a story can be that only follows a few characters. Combine this with a setting limitation and you will have even more fun!
5. Limit your timeline.
How short can you focus your story on? Can your story take place in a specific year or month? Or just a day?
This made Series 24 so interesting because the entire storyline took place in just twenty-four very intense hours, divided into twenty-four episodes.
Bonus: narrator
A narrator is a particularly effective way to restrict your writing.
Your story may be told in letters written to someone outside the screen. This is how Frankenstein, The Perks of Being a Wallflower or even The Martian are written (this is called an epistole device).
Or maybe your story is just a dialogue, maybe even a story told to someone else. So is Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness and most of William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! are written.
Maybe you have a character who tells the story to the reader, maybe even the story to you, the reader, like Salman Rushdie's midnight kids or Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
Or the author "translates" another book into the language of the reader, although this story does not exist, such as "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman or "How to Train Your Dragon" by Cressida Cowell.
Narrative devices are a great way to use restrictions to make your story more interesting.
You are already using restricted writing. Now just make it official.
Everyone is limited by something. You could be limited by the limits of your shape, by the market, by your ability, or even by your own imagination.
However, if you take the initiative to set your own restrictions, you will actually give your imagination more work and you will find that you have more ideas, not less.
So stop avoiding restrictions. Instead, hire them yourself and let the ideas flow.
How did you consciously or subconsciously restrict your writing? Let us know in the comments!
WORK OUT
Write a story with a limited timeline, in this case: one minute. Can you play the whole story in just sixty seconds?
Practice this limitation for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comment section. And when you post, you should criticize three of your colleagues.
Have fun writing!
Joe Bunting
