Dare to Be Different, Even If You Stand Alone

We should always strive to put our own spin on things, even if it means being looked at as an outlier.

The series I’m writing is based upon a formula that demands shorter content, stuffed into 50,000 words or fewer. But I’ve made my novels full-length for this series after the first two. The next novel will wrap up the Treblesong Archipelago (continent) arc and begin the tale proper when the story catches up to the in medias res prelude of The Symphonist.

I’m also not using common eastern tropes that you might find in a light novel series. Most light novels aren’t very poetic or floaty with the language, but I strive for a standard that says high-caliber storytelling mixed with whimsical, direct prose. Light novel archetypes demand a simpler writing style, but I can’t do that. I mess with words until I’m happy with the sentence. The flow, the syllables, the verbs, and the like must be how I want them.

This makes writing this series difficult, because I want to make sure the reader understands the story while hitting my standard for prose. Sometimes it will be direct, other times the prose will dance about, kindled by a stroke of inspiration.

Everyone knows how a person walks across the room to reach the other side. But in the hands of a writer, that process becomes art—it becomes something altogether transcendent that makes the reader come alive with a picture in their mind that otherwise might be simple.

This doesn’t mean spending two pages describing the pattern on a button, but hey, if that’s what the writer feels needs to be done, I say go all out at it.

It’s important to write in your own voice, your own way of telling a story. Humans are storytelling creatures, ever since the days of man’s first steps on this planet. Cave paintings tell a tale, architecture speaks its wonders to all who will listen.

Stories are ingrained in humanity.

But what stands out is not chasing a trend or writing to “market,” whatever that means.

Stories that stick with us have that familiarity of style.

My stories will never sound like insert author name here’s stories. Because I’m not that person. I have my own experiences and worldview that I must stay true to.

Not that writing your experiences might help tell a story, because the stories you might be meant to tell could comprise a fantasy world dreamed within the depths of the human mind.

You can’t say you’ve experienced a world made of marshmallows (though I suppose someone on drugs might have some kind of experience like that). But you can use that flair that makes a story yours and make that world seem alive.

Would I write a story about such a world? No, I wouldn’t. I have my call, and another has theirs. But it’d be a different story. I suppose it might be like Wonderland mixed with the board game Candy Land. I’m sure there’s a monopoly on such a world already if you count board game’s lore. It turns out that the game was made to cheer up sick kids, so using that train of thought might spark a story to do the same thing.

Which is what us writers do in the first place. Take people away for a while from this complex and ever-changing world.

But the best way to do it is to put your own spin on things. Do something on the path you’re meant to blaze.

There’s a common argument that everything has been done before. But I don’t think that’s true at all. If you add in your style and flair, it’s not been done but by you.

Someone out there is going to love what you’ve created. The audience might not be big yet, but that doesn’t mean it will never get to that point. Especially if you make the path yourself.

“This is too different.” Repeatedly, this has been said. And repeatedly taking the weird road works.

“We can’t market this.” Then it sells to another publisher.

“You can’t be a musical act using objects.” Uh, Stomp?

All these lines have been said, and all of them have been proven wrong over and over.

Think outside the box, or, better yet, think like there is no box. Or make the box out of something a box would never be made of.

Put as much you as you can into something, and the result will be something so full of life and personality it will stand on its own.

Don’t be afraid to be different.

Every star in the sky might look the same on the surface, but each one has its own position.