How to Cultivate Curiosity in Your Own Work | Part Two
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Curiosity is one of the most powerful tools in your writer toolkit, and if you’re going to finish your draft, it’s important to keep your tools sharp. Writing a story is tough! Curiosity, more than flashes of brilliance or insight, will sustain you as you show up to the page day after day. While brilliance and insight do occur, they’re terribly difficult to produce on command. Also, more often than not, they’re more easily seen with eyes that are already looking for nuance, questions, and reasons. And it doesn’t take a lot of energy to ask “why?”
Cultivating your curiosity can help you stay inspired to keep working, to keep going when the going gets tough. Writers block, page fright, and other literary stumbling blocks can all be defeated by becoming more curious about what you’re working on. An easy way to become curious is to radically change your perspective, and that’s what we’ll be talking about today.
“Creativity flows when curiosity is stoked.”—Neil Blumenthal
Curiosity killed the cat, didn’t it?
This common phrase might have popped into your mind, but you may not be familiar with the second part. Yes, curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back—meaning sometimes, the risk is absolutely worth it.
It’s true that this kind of dramatic reframing can sometimes feel like you’re kicking the supports out from under your story, especially if you’ve done a lot of groundwork already. A fresh perspective gives us fresh eyes. We might see something we hadn’t noticed before, and sometimes that something looks like a glaring hole or oversight. However, you might also see a new solution or approach you hadn’t considered before.
Just suppose: “What if” and inversions
I’ve grouped these two new ways of seeing together because they hold more drastic potential. Supposing and “for instancing” might appear harmless at first, but you can often find seeds of powerful plots in these exercises if you leave yourself open to the possibilities. You can think of trying these activities like trying on hats. Some of the results can be fabulous but not what you’re looking for, some might be completely wrong for you, and some might be perfect. Even if you ultimately don’t end up changing a thing in your story, it’s always interesting to try out new hats.
What if…?
These two words are mighty when it comes to changing your perspective on your own work. When you come across a fact, character, or event, you can question it. This is similar to the question of “why?”; however, “what if” looks for alternatives for what could be rather than reasons for how it currently is. If you’re willing to consider a wider perspective, “what if” can take you down new and different paths that can provide you with rich nuance or a much-needed solution.
Here are some questions to help you get started:
What if my story started in a different place?
What if my main character doesn’t have all the information they need?
What if this character isn’t telling the truth?
What if I added elements from another genre?
Inversions: What’s the opposite?
Like “what if,” inversions seems simple, but their implications can have massive effects on your manuscript. Basically, an inversion is when you flip something on its head. Taking an idea and considering its opposite can spark your curiosity and, in turn, your creativity. You might even ask other people what they think the opposite of a particular concept or character is and compare it to what you’ve come up with.
What is the opposite of a kiss? The color blue?
Write your protagonist displaying the opposite of their three primary traits.
Cast your antagonist as the hero and the hero as the villain. What aspects of their characters would make them good at their new roles?
Instead of enemies to lovers, what about lovers to enemies? Instead of forced proximity, what about forced separation?
Write about an unwise owl or a slow rabbit.
Try a new angle: Point of view and unusual approaches
Coming to your work in a new way puts the same content in a new light. These next two exercises are all about shifting how you think about what you’ve written. Sometimes all it takes to move past a plot problem or to get reengaged with your story is to consider a completely new way to tell it. Just like you’re changing your angle to look at the story, maybe the story itself needs a unique angle to be told.
Altering your point of view
Could your story benefit from being told from a different point of view? This can include the usual way we think of POV (first, second, and third person), but you could also expand this to consider other characters who might help you tell the story. You might even consider using animals or inanimate objects as a point of view.
What would this story sound like if it was told by someone who has no idea what’s going on, such as a tourist?
On the other hand, how would the action in this scene appear to a total insider?
What would it be like to write this scene from the perspective of a statue?
What does the plot look like from the POV of a secondary character?
An unusual approach for something common
Mixing and matching is a great way to be curious about your own work. What are everyday things that could be made more unusual (i.e., does your character have to have a PB&J sandwich for lunch)? What normal activities could become more interesting, more exciting, or more dangerous? Consider the hobbies or occupations your characters participate in and think about how making those elements more remarkable could add interest to your story.
Put an ordinary scene in a new, perhaps completely inappropriate setting.
Think about a particular occupation, say farming, and subvert expectations. Could your character harvest balloons? Dreams? Scents?
Change the clientele for an industry. Perhaps you have a real estate agency for ghosts or a costume rental shop for spies or time travelers.
Contrast a serious conversation with a lighthearted setting or vice versa.
Have fun!
Standing on your head isn’t necessary to get a new perspective on your writing. More seriously, with any of these exercises, don’t feel like you have to use what you think of in your current draft. Sometimes all you need to keep going is to get up and open the windows of your imagination before you’re ready to sit back down to work again. Play is the heart of creativity, and using these techniques and questions can provide you with ways to engage with your work in a new way.
I do recommend keeping a file of anything interesting you think of but decide not to use. It could come in handy for another story!
Want more ideas on how to cultivate your curiosity and stay inspired? Take a look through Part 1 here.
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