In the recent days, I was tidying up the shelves in my room and came across my notebooks from childhood. It was delightful to revisit my early experiences of writing fictional characters and stories. Fortunately, I had engaged in writing short stories at various points in my life until now, and observing the differences and improvements inspired me to write an article about it.
Even though some of these were look alikes or copies of known stories and novels that I read back then, I was also attempting to infuse them with my imagination. While it’s true that we tend to lose parts of our imagination over time due to life’s demands, it is often at its peak during childhood. However, during this phase, you don’t have as many experiences to enrich it with your knowledge.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
One way to enhance your works with imagination is by revisiting your old stories and revising them with the wisdom you’ve gained over time. Can you reconnect with your former self while doing so? I did this yesterday, and I must say it was a lot of fun.
I’ve mentioned before that I began creating my fiction stories by imitating the setting of my favourite books but mostly “The Lord of the Rings”. In fact, I was more inclined towards games than books. What makes games interesting is that the repetition can yield different results each time, depending on your gameplay style. Thus, my gameplay reflects my thought process, allowing me to infuse my imagination into the gaming experience. And then, to my stories as well.
Moreover, during my fascination with action genre games, I would consider each chapter of the game as a piece of the story. After completing each stage, I’d write about it as if I were keeping a diary from the perspective of the character I played in the game.
It’s true that these influences aren’t entirely original, but there’s no shame in that. This is how you build your creative instincts. I enjoyed this process in the past, even though I don’t play games as much anymore. However, role-playing games still provide the same creative outlet, as long as you embrace the role-play aspect.
Returning to the main topic, I found the stories I wrote for fun, and they were quite decent. I believe I did a good job as a kid. This also helped me understand how my thinking and writing evolved. The choice of words, sentence structures, repeated phrases, and use of punctuation provided insight into the mind of that young version of me. It also highlighted the changes I’ve made in my writing and storytelling.
This trip down memory lane inspired me to rewrite these stories. I spent some time writing them down after rereading them once or twice. Fortunately, I didn’t remember the games as vividly (so I could be more original while rewriting), even though some moments did resurface. Those were the good days.
Since the stories had been written before, rewriting them didn’t take any longer than I anticipated. After a short while, I had an entirely different script. I realized how much I’ve matured in my thinking and how I’ve improved my writing. It was indeed an interesting weekend activity.
In fact, I always review my phrases. When writing my stories, I revisit not only the first one but every story I’ve written up to the present. This helps refresh my memory regarding the characters, events, hidden elements I can’t reveal entirely to the reader, and more. It’s always beneficial unless you start making edits every single time you do it (can be tedious and exhausting, don’t ask me how I know). However, taking a stroll through my past was a unique experience compared to rereading what I had recently written.
Give this a chance if you have similar works or perhaps old diaries. It might help you remember what you’ve forgotten and appreciate how far you’ve come.
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