Note From Tongal: “Get Experimental with Your Creative Writing” is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
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The other day, I met with a mentor who gave me the best piece of writing advice I have ever received: experiment. You see, I was stuck with certain parts of a script I was working on, and I didn’t know how to move forward with the project. However, I was largely stuck because I had only been thinking about this one script; in working so diligently on the movie script, I had neglected any other form of writing.
Think of writing like a baseball team, and different styles of writing like baseball players. As a writer, it helps to have all the players at your disposal— you wouldn’t just want a pitcher on the field. Now, I’m not advocating for a poet to spend an equal amount of time on songwriting and comedy sketches as poetry; it’s perfectly okay to specialize! But would a poet benefit from writing a song, or a comedy sketch, or even a novella? Of course, because different styles of writing are constantly incorporating elements from other styles. And perhaps even better— different writing projects are constantly borrowing parts from your other writing projects!
How does this relate to Tongal? Great question. As you probably know, Ideation on Tongal is truly a unique format, and it can be tricky to master. Tongal projects embody a huge diversity in writing— some projects are comedy-driven, others are more heartfelt, and the rest can fall anywhere in between. In addition to the variety of tones, it can also be hard to fit your idea into a character limit! For most, writing for one project on Tongal may feel like an entirely different experience than writing for a different project.
And this brings us back to the writing advice from my mentor, which I think is perfectly tailored for Tongal projects. Some quick examples of the applicability: writing poetry will help with brevity, writing a comedy sketch will help generate funny ideas for a commercial, writing short stories will bring a better understanding of plot arcs, and so on and so forth. Working on these other writing projects may not bring immediate gain, but they help build out your roster, which will always be at your disposal for the rest of your life.
The point of this advice is not to say that you should spend every second working on different writing projects. Rather, if you ever find yourself in a rut, try writing for a different project. Writing is never singular, so what’s to say that you can’t borrow elements from different projects? If you write a short comedy sketch and then think that your joke would work well for a future Tongal project, then include it! If you find yourself unable to express your ideas in 140 characters, try writing a haiku! And even if you don’t think there will be a clear connection between Tongal and a writing project, your writing will never suffer from additional practice. It’s truly a win-win, because your writing will benefit and you’ll probably find yourself winning more Tongal projects!
