9: Writing With Limitations

Limitation Can Lead to More Results

Creativity can spark from limitations. If you were asked to write any sentence, out of thin air with no restrictions, how creative would it be? Overwhelmed with an infinite number of possibilities, you may become frozen in thought—unsure of what even to write. However, if you were asked to complete this sentence:

Technically, this prompt should be harder than the first one. Instead of selecting from an infinite number of choices, there are much fewer options to choose from that could theoretically work. However, it is surprising how quickly your brain can fill in the sentence. In fact, if you were asked to complete this sentence ten times, you could probably do it quite easily.

Constraints pressure our minds to think. For many, this type of challenge can be invigorating, like solving a puzzle. In order to solve the puzzle, we may have to discover new perspectives, techniques, or resources to find the solution. This type of thinking can broaden our mind, expanding our writing skills in the process. Writing in the same style, format, or genre, may reduce the challenge of writing—resulting in repetitive or uninspiring works. Sometimes, it is great to experiment with self-imposed limitations to spark imaginative results. Not all of these results will be successful, but some results could lead to new avenues on your journey as a storyteller.

Writing With Prompts

The easiest way to write with limitations is to assign a prompt to yourself.

The previous section used a prompt, whereas you were asked to complete the second half of the sentence. While there is no correct answer for a prompt, some responses would simply not work. If I were to write, “When he opened the door, twelve plus two equals fourteen,” that sentence makes no logical sense. There needs to be a logical solution to the prompt, but that solution still has many options to choose from. In short, creating one answer out of a possible thousand is far easier than choosing one out of a billion.

A prompt can range from being less restrictive to extremely restrictive. For example, a less restrictive prompt would be “Write about a cowboy.” While the story needs to have an element of a cowboy in it, you could write millions of stories about a cowboy in the wild west. Even more, nothing in the prompt mentioned that it had to be in the wild west. It could be about cowboys in space or about anthropomorphic rabbits acting as cowboys. Technically, you could write about a cow-boy: half cow, half boy. While a prompt like this may seem limiting, it really isn’t if you are creative enough.

An extremely restrictive prompt would be more of a challenge. While prompts like these may be more frustrating than enriching, they can improve upon a person’s skill and force unexpected creativity. For example, the prompt could be “Write a paragraph with no adjectives.” This is challenging but can force the writer to be creative in what they write. In addition, it can teach the skill that adjectives are not always needed to tell a story:

While this is not the most dynamic paragraph, the example above was challenging to write. Originally, one sentence was written as “This decision hurt Pedro, but it was necessary.” However, because necessary is an adjective, it had to be removed. Instead, the new line “she needed to hear ‘no,’” removes the adjective and is more impactful in the process. That act of replacing the line required creativity, and forcing authors into predicaments like this can vastly improve their creative skills.

Prompts like these can also help generate new ideas. If you are stuck and are unsure as to what to write, try designing and or searching for a prompt and see what comes out of it (you can also use AI to generate a list of prompts as well). The prompt could ultimately lead to one of your best pieces.

Digging A Hole

Prompts are great, but they are typically best when developing something from scratch or you are working on a brand-new scene. If you are already in the process of developing a story, another limitation you can try is deliberately putting your narrative into a difficult state by digging a hole.

While some authors like to plan out their narrative from beginning to end, sometimes it is better to put the characters into unknown territory and figure out how they would act. For example, how would you solve this following problem regarding these three children?

The situation has a significant problem for the children. What will happen to them? Will they starve? Will they be saved? This situation was originally written with no set solution. While this is fiction and technically anything could happen (we could write “And then a dragon flew them back to their parents”), a realistic scenario should call for a realistic solution. This limitation is a problem not only for the child but for the author themselves. It is like the author dug a deep hole and is unsure how to climb out. However, this type of limitation forces the author to come up with solutions for how to escape this literary hole. Perhaps the solution could be this:

Originally, there were a couple of options I thought of to solve the problem. First, was for the children to scream really loud and draw attention to some people near a campsite. That sounded a bit too convenient and relied more on luck. Then, I imagined that one of the children had a hidden compass somewhere in their bag. Again, it felt unrealistic, and even if they had a compass, what would they do with it without a map? Finally, thinking from the previous idea, I imagined one of the children looking at a map previously and relying on nature for navigation.

Next time you are unsure how to progress a story, ask yourself, “How would my character react if _____ happened to them? What would they do?” Certain answers may surprise you, and it could lead you to craft a much different plot than you intended.

Forcing New Experiences

Another type of limitation is attempting something outside of your comfort zone. A significant limitation is trying to write a genre, character, or setting you have never worked with before. Perhaps you are comfortable writing only Young Adult fiction. Why not try writing Adult Fiction or even something completely different, like poetry? Even in the realm of poetry, for example, you could try writing a different type of poetry, like an Italian sonnet or free verse.

For characters, perhaps you have only written about teenage problems and never considered the viewpoint of the elderly. You could also try writing about characters that are completely unlike you demographically, physically, or ethnically. This is immensely challenging because if you only have experiences regarding yourself and the people around you, it can be difficult to write about others that we know very little about. This limitation of knowledge requires research, interaction, and simply getting out of your comfort zone to explore new viewpoints and see how others live, think, and love.

Finally for setting, try writing about a location unlike anything you have experienced. What would it be like for your character to be in Indonesia, Lesotho, or The Netherlands? Like the previous paragraph, research is required, and it may have to involve actually visiting these locations to get a better sense of their culture and presence. These settings do not have to be geographical; they could be something like a library, a bowling alley, or a run-down bar. However, in order to capture these types of settings, try directly visiting these spots to find particular details—like how the run-down bars have decades-old water stains or how the bowling alley has loose ceiling wires that the manager doesn’t care about.

Unlike the other types of limitations, in which the end results forces creativity, these types of limitations force the author to live life in new ways. The author must now interact with different people, places, and things in order to discover new ways to talk about the world. This type of challenge can be intimidating but immensely rewarding—forcing ourselves to leave our computers, desks, and rooms to see firsthand the intricacies of what life has to offer.

Writing as Play

Not all of these limitations are going to result in good writing. A lot of the time, they may end up terrible. Some prompts result in mediocre writing and have little value. Certain plots with complicated problems may simply not have a satisfying solution. Exploring and researching the world may only end up with an awkward interaction at the post office. In the end, these limitations were just playing with alternatives and enjoying the process. Writing with limitations is supposed to be difficult, but it also has no serious repercussions. The worst-case scenario is you simply delete what you wrote. This is not a high-stakes performance, where you are writing live on stage for everyone to see. Instead, limitations are supposed to enact the feeling of play.

Humans are exceptional at learning when there is little stress involved. While challenging moments may create tense or riveting experiences, significant stress has little benefits for an author—especially in terms of creativity. It is okay to fail with limitations that you set for yourself. Instead of being frustrated, focus on why certain “solutions” you designed do not seem to work. In addition, appreciate that you are having fun—playing with different things to see what best works for you. Don’t let failure set you back; let failure be a learning experience that will improve your ability to tell a good story.

Check in: Complete the Writing Prompt